


In Between Days

by Eva_Marlowe



Series: Daring to Desire You [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Jealousy, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Slice of Life, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-16 20:56:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12350499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva_Marlowe/pseuds/Eva_Marlowe
Summary: Oliver and Elio, between chapter 2 and the epilogue of Daring to Desire You.Just a few snapshots of their life together.I have now seen the film, so there will be more references to it than in my previous work.





	1. London, February 1987  - Saturday

**Author's Note:**

> Please don’t re-post my stories elsewhere without my permission :) 
> 
> I don’t own the characters, they own me, big time.
> 
> The title is taken from the eponymous song by The Cure.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Will you stop biting me?” Oliver protested, as I licked along the indentation left by my teeth on his upper arm. When I was done, I kissed it with a loud smack which made him guffaw.

“Should I?”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, gathering me into his arms.

“It’s just that you are so much...”

“Too much?”

He was still smiling, but sounded wary.

The lies I had told about my visits to Subway had left an imprint in Oliver’s imagination, which was as vivid as mine. He had built an entire world around my invented Don Juan persona and even though I had come clean and told him about my recent lack of sexual and romantic attachments, he wasn’t fully convinced that I really wanted to be with him only.

“Never enough,” I replied, caressing down his bare chest to his abdomen and stopping short of his crotch.

“Tease.”

“First time I grabbed you there, you rejected me.”

“I was trying to be good.”

“Your resolution didn’t last very long.”

“I wanted you too much.”

“You never really told me what went on in your head, after our first kiss.”

The mood had turned from lustful to playful. I was sprawled on top of him, our legs tangled together; we were both naked and relishing the idea of a lazy Saturday spent indoors; the weather was grey and chilly and we had nothing planned which couldn’t be postponed.

“I remember clearly how scared I was. I stayed away for as long as I could, but when you left me that message I knew that I was lost.”

“If I had let you go, you would not have come after me.”

He kissed me on the forehead, softly.

“I don’t know about that. That day at lunch, when your nose started bleeding, I felt terrible.”

“You felt so bad that you didn’t even stick around.”

After three years, it still hurt.

“I needed time and solitude to think. I could not do that around you.”

“Why, was I too tempting?” I asked, pressing my chest against his.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Stay still or I won’t be able to.”

I gave his collarbone a wet kiss, before settling back in his embrace.

He spent a few moments collecting his memories or perhaps he was embarrassed to confess his secrets.

“When I came to your room to invite you to go swimming, you remember? You were hard and wet in your trunks and I could smell you. I couldn’t wipe that image from my mind. And your skin: you were always half-naked. I wanted to taste you, touch you. But I knew myself; once I started, I could never stop.”

“You stopped me.”

“I wanted to protect you.”

“From what I wanted?”

“You didn’t know what you wanted. You were chasing after Marzia half the time.”

I had reflected about that and had come to the conclusion that my desire for Oliver had been so all-consuming that my body could not contain it.

“I wanted you, but I thought you were off-limits, _proibito_ , _verboten_.”

He pressed his lips against the side of my neck.

“The hours I spent on my own, trying to convince myself that I should let you be. The number of cold showers I took,” he chuckled.

“I remember that. I had told myself that if you were to come in late at night and shower, it was because you’d had sex. I called you a traitor and hated you for that.”

“You imagined I had sex with everybody, while I only dreamed of you.”

“Did you ever stop... dreaming of me?”

“Consciously, yes, but the love and desire never went away.”

Every time he mentioned his love for me, my heart leapt in my throat. It would take time to get used to it. A lifetime, maybe.

“I was reminded of you once, at Subway. I was sick in the toilets as a result.”

“Is that supposed to be flattering?”

“I cried my eyes out.”

That was a cheap shot, but I felt suddenly vulnerable: while I had been puking in a gay club, he had been making love to another man. It was no one’s fault, but merely the consequence of my immature behaviour.

Oliver’s expression tensed a little, his blue gaze clouded with regrets. He rubbed my lips with the pad of his thumb and closed his eyes, as if he were playing a beloved instrument by memory.

“I can’t stand to see you cry. And to be responsible for it,” he shook his head, eyes still shut.

He squeezed me even tighter; his armpits, shoulders, chest giving off a heady, musky scent that never failed to ignite my blood.

“Kiss me better,” I murmured into his ear.

Our kisses were always verging on the desperate, even when they started feather-light.

This one had no soft prologue: Oliver took my mouth as if he wanted to breathe life into it and I let him take control. I swooned, but willingly this time. He was on top of me, his tongue down my throat, one hand in my hair and the other cupping my face, fingers stroking in soft counterpoint to the firmness of his grasp.

Oliver, I moaned at some point, and he looked me in the eye, gasping a little, tousled hair shining golden in the semi-darkness of our bedroom.

 _Our bedroom_.

“Better now?” he asked, smiling as if his heart had been squeezed like one of Anchise’s apricots and its juice smeared across his lips.

“Much,” I said, and took advantage of his dazed state to flip him around and push him down on his back. When he hit the mattress, I crawled over him and worked my way from throat to navel, licking and sucking and nuzzling, letting myself go, uninhibited and savage, leaving trails of saliva and teeth-marks. That wound on his hip - which he’d acquired falling from his bike – had not scarred but the skin seemed newer there, baby-soft. I kissed it with reverence, like I had done when it was still sore.

I had told him at the time that I worshipped him, that I adored every cell of his body and he had let me suck his toes, staring at me with a bewildered, fond expression.

He was staring at me now, serious and almost vibrating with unspoken emotion.

“Yes,” I said, meaning I still felt the same, even more so now that we had walked through fire and come out of it as one.

The tenderness would have drowned me had I not felt his cock twitch and slap me on the throat.

“Impatient,” I murmured and sucked on its wet head. I loved going down on him, because of the way he surrendered himself to me, parting his thighs open wide to invite me in. I licked his balls and took them in my mouth, first one then the other, and he begged me to finish him off. When he came, I was lost in the bliss of it, his scent and flavour making me dizzy.

“Come up here,” he said, hoarsely.

He drank his own taste out of my mouth and later held me in silence, his heart and mine keeping the same rhythm.

“Your turn,” he said, kissing my cheek.

“I want to come on your chest.”

I could never forget that first morning together, when at last I had ejaculated on him and he’d used his shirt to clean up the mess. The embodiment of sex, that’s what it had seemed to me.

“Need a hand?”

“Not on my cock.”

He knew what I wanted, and as I straddled his torso, he put two wet fingers inside me and kept the same pace as my pumping fist. I caught him partly on his chin and lower lip, which made him smile. He licked it all up, sucked my fingers clean.

“I’ll use my shirt again,” he whispered against the palm of my hand.

Of course he remembered, too.

Light of my life, now and forever.


	2. London, February 1987 - Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another lazy day in Elio and Oliver's blissful life.  
> Oliver is a saint, ha ha.

“I spoke to your mother last night, when you went out to buy the wine.”

I was ironing my shirts, a practice which I hated with every fibre of my being. With no Mafalda here to help me, I had long acquired the habit to purchase crease-resistant clothes. I took the formal wear to the dry cleaners, but to save money I sometimes did my own shirt-ironing.

Oliver frequently took pity on me, and to be fair he did an infinitely better job than I ever could. This time he was working on an article that was going to be published on the London Review of Books, so he mostly ignored me, except for the occasional snort of hilarity when he heard me curse at collars and sleeves.

“What, why didn’t you say? She didn’t offend you, I hope.”

Oliver’s mother had briefly accepted her son’s ‘abnormality’ for the duration of her husband’s funeral ceremony, but with sobriety had come rejection, once again. She refused to acknowledge my presence in his life and didn’t even want to hear my name spoken. I had expected her to put the phone down as soon as she heard my voice, but maybe she had been too polite for that.

“No, she only wanted to know how you were, because you haven’t been calling her and she was worried.”

“She knows I hate talking on the phone. And last time we spoke she said you were only a child and would grow out of _it_ eventually and marry a nice Jewish girl.”

“I invited her to come to my parents’ house next summer.”

Ominous silence.

I was ruining the collar of my favourite Armani shirt and swore at the shiny oleaginous mark I had left on it.

“Just leave it,” he said, impatiently, and took the instrument of torture from my hand, setting it down on its stand.

He gazed at the shirt then at my despondent expression and laughed.

“I will pay for the dry cleaners rather than have you go through this every time. It’s painful to watch, almost like those films with Sophie Marceau.”

“La Boum, 1 & 2” I suggested, and he grimaced. I had told him that Marzia loved them, especially the first one; he’d insisted to watch them, while I mostly contemplated his disgusted expression and giggled like an idiot. At least now he knew who Pierre Cosso was and he understood why I’d given Sylvain his nickname.

“What did she say?” he asked, and sprayed some cold water on the collar, trying to repair the damage I had done.

“At first, she tried to change the subject, but I insisted and in the end, she said she would think about it. If you give me her address, I will ask my mother to send her a formal invitation. Not my father, because he would probably quote Plato or Socrates. He just can’t help it.”

“You’re no different. Bit of a show-off.”

“Moi?”

“Yes, my friend, you. Don’t even try to deny it or I will burn a hole in this silly shirt.”

“It wouldn’t be worse than it already is.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed by someone who can actually iron.”

“Quod erat demonstrandum.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you that you’d boss me around and here you are, bossing me around.”

I hoped Oliver was enjoying our sparring just as much as I was. The glare he cast in my direction should have convinced me of the opposite, but his lips wore the ghost of a smile.

“Here,” he said, and brandished my shirt in the manner of a matador with his muleta.

Naturally, it was flawless.

“I love this shirt on you.”

“Last time I wore it at the Fallen Angel, you couldn’t wait to get me home and strip it off me.”

He wrapped it around my shoulders and pulled me closer.

“Precisely.”

I pretended to resist him, but I didn’t last more than a handful of seconds. We were both laughing into the kiss until it became only a brushing of mouths, a sharing of breath.

He steered me towards the sofa and got rid of the ironed shirt.

“Look, I don’t want my mother to insult you or your parents. I love her, but she’s never cared about my happiness, not really. The only time she ever said something which remotely sounded like good advice was after her husband had been buried and she had too much to drink. And even that, she’s already recanted.”

“You have no brothers or sisters; you are all she has left.”

“Don’t be melodramatic: mine is a large family, a large Jewish family. I have so many cousins I can hardly remember all their names. Why do you think I hate the telephone so much? It’s because when I lived with my parents, my mother spent hours talking to my aunts. I left home as soon as I could, which is why I wouldn’t take their money.”

“It’s only for a few days at the end of the vacation. We’ll have more than a month to ourselves.”

I lay down and used his lap as a pillow.

“We’ll sleep in the same bed this time.”

“We already did, the last few days at least.”

He caressed my hair, massaging my scalp a little.

“I can’t imagine being in a bed without you in it.”

“Only last night you said, and I quote: _you are a giant and take way too much space_.”

“You accused me of hogging the duvet.”

“You were wrapped inside it like a burrito.”

“We should be discussing Roland Barthes, but we are not because you are resisting him; which is why we are talking about burritos and shirts instead.”

“Resisting Barthes, that’s an interesting one. And why would I be doing that, I’m sure you have a theory.”

“That’s easy,”

He was right about me: I dearly loved to brag. That I had done incessantly during our summer together, to dazzle him with my music and my books, and attract his attention in the only way I deemed possible. He had seen through me, but instead of resenting my attitude, he’d been lured by it. _Amor ch’a nullo amato amar perdona_. There was a grain of truth in that, for certainly Oliver had seen himself reflected in the mirror of my adoration for him.

“You should be reviewing his last book, _Fragments d’un discours amoureux,_ and you don’t like writing about love. You don’t mind it when it’s from a safe distance, from a perspective of intellectual scrutiny, but Barthes won’t allow you to do that; in this instance, you are required to wallow in desire and deconstruct its mechanisms _.”_

“And you wondered why I asked you to help me with the TLS articles.”

I raised my arm towards his head: he took hold of my hand and kissed the spaces between my fingers.

“If you are unsure, you should do it.”

“Better to speak than to die.”

“Always.”

I closed my eyes and let the memory of that lost afternoon wash over me. I had taken that fatal decision; I would never have to regret inaction. And here I was, in the only place in the universe where I wanted to be. And yet after our first kiss, I had not even been sure that I had enjoyed it. As hard as I tried to recapture that feeling, I could not. Superimposed to it was the bliss of those that came after it, and my body denied me the recollection of an uncertainty I could no longer feel. I could remember having felt it, but only because I had written about it in my diary.

But I knew that for Oliver my confusion had translated into rejection, so he was wary to revisit that emotional turmoil, even if only theoretically.

I turned my head and kissed his belly.

“If we don’t get up now, and I mean _now_ , I won’t be doing any work at all,” he said, and I felt the evidence of his statement nudging my collarbone. I was in a similar state, and was supposed to proof-read some material for the TLS which I had promised to deliver on the following Wednesday.

“Right, right,” I replied, and slipped a hand under his t-shirt; I didn’t caress him, I just let my hand rest above his heart.

“You are not making things easier.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

He snorted and ruffled my hair.

“My best offer is a kiss, but keep your hands to yourself,” he said.

That was the sort of games that I enjoyed, mainly because I usually won.

“You didn’t say we should use _only_ our mouths, so I have decreed that I will kiss you here.”

And before he could react, I shimmied down a little and pushed my face into his pyjama-clad crotch. I breathed wetly against the fabric and sucked at the base of his dick. When I was done, he was fully erect.

I raised my face to his, licked my lips and smiled.


	3. London, March 1987 - Friday night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dash of angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Corinthians club does not exist in reality but it is mentioned in the gay novel The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

The party in Bloomsbury had been thrown by Oliver’s publishers to celebrate the unexpected success of one of their books. It was a pop-psychology collection, aimed at young readers, whom it patronised and cajoled none too subtly.

Oliver disliked it and so did I, but he could not refuse the invitation.

The event couldn’t have been more different from the haphazard yet joyous one we had attended in Rome for the launch of Se l’Amore: held at a member’s club off Gordon Square, all sombre leathers and huge fireplaces, it was attended by a garishly dressed crowd with razor-sharp smiles and hungry eyes.

Soon they will be drunk, I thought, and they will be snide and hateful and tomorrow they’ll pretend it was all just jolly good fun.

It didn’t bother me, although I’d rather have spent the evening elsewhere.

My main problem was Oliver’s colleague, a Christopher Reeve lookalike named Julian who lusted after Oliver and hated my very existence.

We’d been introduced when he’d been invited to dinner at our place back in January; he’d spent the entire evening talking about people I didn’t know and things which had happened the previous year. He seemed to have tolerated Tim, but from what I gathered, only because he despised his intellect and considered him his equal in terms of attractiveness.

Oliver had done his best to include me in the conversation and as the dinner had progressed, he had become increasingly irritated and finally had demanded that Julian either behave like an adult or leave.

I had not seen him since then, but I knew that he was plotting my downfall in the wings, like a pantomime villain.

There was a brief talk then a buffet and drinks and by the time the jazzy music had become noticeably louder, almost everybody was drunk or half-way there.

I had just finished talking with a writer I had met a couple of times at the TLS and was looking for the gents, when I heard Julian’s voice behind me. The basement was empty and like many old buildings in London, it was dank and badly lit.

“Here goes the Shropshire lad,” he said, cigarette in hand. He wore black-rimmed glasses which made him look like Clark Kent.

“I’m not even English.”

He put the cigarette between my lips.

“He told me you speak French and Italian. Is that the attraction? Because frankly I can’t see what else it could be. A boy doing a man’s job: that never ends well.”

I spat the cigarette out and crushed it under the heel of my Doc Martens.

“It’s none of your business,” I replied, and retraced my steps. He cornered me and breathed hotly in my face. I wasn’t scared, but he was as tall and big as Oliver and blind drunk. I could smell wine and whisky on him, but he was lucid enough to talk without impediments.

“Just think about it: he’s an intelligent, sophisticated, handsome man and you are a student who can’t even grow a beard. How long do you reckon before he grows tired of your limited charms and starts wondering why he even cared in the first place?”

I looked him in the eye without blinking.

“You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I have known him for longer than you have, have seen him with Tim. Do you want to know how he was with Tim?”

He grabbed my chin between thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard enough to make my eyes water.

“Oh, you do want to know about that, don’t you?”

And the truth was that yes, of course I did, because Oliver only gave me vague answers and his friends would not betray his confidence.

Julian smirked and there was a manic expression in his grey eyes which wasn’t only due to his intoxicated state.

“The first time I saw them together was at the gym. In the showers anything goes. You know how it works or perhaps you don’t, but anyway they were going at it: hands, tongues, no heavy duty stuff, he wouldn’t do that in public, but they were having the time of their lives; great bodies, both of them, real men not under-fed kids.”

“They were a couple, they had sex: tell me something I don’t know.”

I was aiming for nonchalance and sarcasm, but missing by miles. Oliver had never suggested I go to the gym with him; he always went on his own and usually during his lunch break.

“The way Oliver looked at him, like he was the centre of his universe.”

“Let me go.”

I was starting to shake and my bladder was about to burst.

He moved aside, raising his arms and adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his Grecian nose.

“The gents are at the end of the corridor; go and have a good cry.”

I salvaged the shreds of my dignity and managed not to run, but when I got there I was trembling so badly it was almost an Olympian feat to relieve myself without incidents.

Julian’s revelations were not of an earth-shattering nature, nothing of what he had told me was unexpected or shocking, but hearing it described so vividly conjured up a version of Oliver which I had not met; perhaps he’d had sex with other men at the gym and now was maybe nostalgic, wishing he could have that freedom again, that wonderful spontaneity of a body which seeks another only for its beauty and the pleasure it will evince from it.

I felt hollow and too young and old at the same time. It didn’t make any sense, because I had performed the same acts and even slept with Marzia when I was already in love with Oliver. Why wasn’t it the same, I wondered?

Mine had been the fumbling of the inexperienced, trials and errors, fun and games, like Oliver had called them, but his had been the real thing; a proper relationship with a man his own age, in a home full of objects and warmth. He had not brought much to my flat: only clothes and books, as if he were only passing by, transient, with no intention to stay. I had not remarked on this, because I thought there would be more to come. Two months later, the situation was unchanged.

I splashed cold water on my face and bumped against a red-faced man on my way out.

Oliver was looking for me and when my eyes met his, his expression changed and mild worry turned into something more complex.

“Where have you been? You were gone for a while; I thought you might have been sick.”

“I haven’t drunk that much.”

“What’s wrong?”

I placed the palm of my hand on his chest: would I be able to tell if he was lying? Would the polygraph of his heart reveal the truth?

“I don’t mind if you do, as long as you tell me. Gyms are a world of their own, a separate reality, so what happens there probably doesn’t count.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nothing to report: his heart was as steady as a ship in calm waters.

“What’s happened to your face? You’ve got red marks on your chin.”

His eyes clouded over.

“Did Julian put his hands on you? He really shouldn’t drink.”

“He only wanted to make sure I was listening.”

“What did he tell you?”

He guided me to a dark corner and sat me down on a chintz sofa.

My hand had lost the connection with his heart and I couldn’t read his eyes as the lighting was insufficient.

I thought of smoking a cigarette, but knew that my fingers would shake if I tried.

“Light me one,” I said, handing him my packet of Silk Cuts.

He did as asked, all the while staring into my eyes, searching for something that he could not find.

“What did he tell you?” he repeated.

“Nothing,” I puffed at the cigarette and looked around us. I felt nauseous and heavy, as if made of lead and concrete. “Nothing, nothing, no-thing,” I repeated, wanting to recapture the moment before I had known about that different Oliver I had never truly met, but only occasionally caught a glimpse of.

“Look, either you tell me or he will. This fixation of his is getting out of hand. I tolerated a lot, but this I won’t tolerate.”

Oliver was breathing hard through his nose and his lips were a white line.

“He wanted me to know about Tim, which is fair enough I thought. He told me of the gym and the sex in the showers and the way you looked at him and all the manly things you did together which I can’t provide yet, but if you need them... is that why you never take me to your gym?”

He seldom swore, but he did then, spitting the words out like bullets.

“I’m done with him. Let’s go before I do something I might regret.”

He took me by the arm and I was too light-headed to resist. I let him bundle me into my coat then into a cab and up into our flat.

Somehow, when I recovered from the sense of unreality that had descended over me since my conversation with Julian, I was sitting down on our bed and partially undressed. Oliver handed me a cup of camomile tea with lemon, like he had done that evening when I had been sick on _torrone_. He sat next to me, but didn’t touch me. I could tell he wanted to, because he kept flexing his fingers and his legs were restless.

“I go to the gym during my lunch break because it’s convenient. I no longer go to Corinthians, which is where Julian saw me with Tim. I only went there briefly but realised that sort of place is not for me. I don’t like being propositioned when I only want to exercise.”

“Maybe you need space and I can...”

“I swear I’m going to kill Julian. I don’t need space and I don’t need random sex in the gym’s showers.”

“I am all you need,” I said and started laughing until it choked me and turned into a fit of coughing.

A red flower bloomed on my thigh: my nose was bleeding.

Oliver swore again and went to the kitchen to get me an ice pack.

After it had stopped and my nose was clogged and swollen, he applied some haemostatic ointment to it. It was a smelly brown cream which I had used since I was a kid. It reminded me of home. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful need to be held in my mother’s arms or even in Mafalda’s; a feminine, soothing presence, incapable and unwilling to hurt me.

I lay back against the headboard and stared in the void, vaguely realising that Oliver was undressing.

“You know why I moved to London,” he whispered against my hair, once he was in bed next to me.

I recalled Vimini’s sneer and her disdain when I refused to believe Oliver’s motivations were in any way linked with mine.

“Yes, yes, but maybe there is another you out there, another Oliver, who looks into another man’s eyes as if he were the centre of his universe.”

He sighed and put a tentative hand on mine.

“Here,” he said, and placed my hand on his chest.

“This is what I feel when I look at you.”

His heart was beating fast, thumping beneath my palm.

“And this is what I feel when you are inside of me or I’m inside of you.”

I felt a jolt of electricity pass between us and I let the fire engulf me.

We kissed for an eternity and when we broke apart, he stared at me with infinite fondness.

“There’s no other Oliver out there. I’m here and you are more me than I was before I met you. Besides,” he smiled, wickedly.

“What?”

“Your name is Elio, Helios, the Sun god: you will always be the centre of my universe.”

 I groaned.

“This is terrible. Vimini would never let you get away with this one.”

He laughed and I touched the dimple on his cheek.

“From now on, I'm going to call you sunshine.”

“No, you will not.”

“Goodnight, sunshine.”

 I ruffled his hair to make him laugh even harder.

“Goodnight, Oliver-Elio,” I replied.


	4. London, March 1987 - Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our boys go dancing.... at Subway: that infamous, sinful den.  
> Sex happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 18 October: I have added a line to the end of this chapter.

“Let’s go to Subway,” Oliver had said, temporarily robbing me of the power of speech.

We often went out on the tiles, sometimes just the two of us, or together with his friends or mine, but it was usually at Heaven or Blitz, where dancing wasn’t only a preliminary to sex.

I was brushing my teeth while he was towelling his hair dry. He intercepted my stunned gaze in the mirror above the sink and winked.

“I want to give you something else to remember when you think about that place.”

“I never think about Subway.”

And it was true: I barely remembered those nights when I had behaved like a vampire on the prowl; there had been a frantic urge in me, a void that needed filling, but which could only be half-sated; my hunger had only increased until it became nausea and then indifference.

He came up behind me and put his hands on my hips. We were both naked.

“I feel like playing,” he murmured, and licked the whorl of my ear.

“What sort of game?”

 I reached behind me with one hand and squeezed the swell of his apricot.

“Pretending to be strangers: lust at first sight, you must have heard about that phenomenon.”

My head fell back on his chest and his mouth was on my neck; soft lips, an even softer tongue; it made me tremble and shiver.

“What if somebody hits on either of us?”

It would be Oliver, because who could resist him? I had become inured to the blatant flirting, the casual touches and the lascivious stares which followed him everywhere we went, because I knew that he didn’t care in the least. More than that: he wasn’t even flattered by all the attention. Incredibly, vanity had passed him by. To him, his beauty was almost a burden, so he ignored its trappings and those who fell for its lure.

“No touching, no sharing, no anything,” I said, with an edge of petulance in my tone that made him smile. He caressed my chest, my stomach, my tummy.

“Not even with you?”

“Only with me.”

He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight.

“This game only has two players,” he said.

I turned round so that we were face to face. I stared into his eyes and knew exactly what I wanted to do.

 

“I look like an idiot,” he insisted, while I finished applying wet-style gel to his wavy hair. It was quite long now and since he’d lost some weight, he had acquired the appearance of a raffish Regency nobleman. The black eye-liner did wonders for his cerulean eyes and long lashes. He was wearing black jeans and an electric blue shirt which belonged to me. It was extra large on my frame, but on his it was as tight as his trousers.

Subway had a leather or black dress code, but I was a member and besides I was convinced Oliver would never be refused entry anywhere whatever his choice of attire.

“You look like Dorian Gray.”

He smiled and kissed the tip of my nose.

“Untouched by sin?”

“Forever innocent, despite the debauchery.”

“And what about you?” he said, appraising my frilly black shirt which contrasted sharply with the pallor of my skin.

“You tell me.”

“Unexpectedly deadly, like a poisonous wallflower,” he replied, rubbing my lips with his thumb.

I leaned closer and kissed him full on the mouth, wet and deep.

“You’re killing me,” he gasped, after a while.

When we left the flat and emerged in the cool evening air, it was almost a relief to feel its chilly breath on my overheated skin.

We smoked a joint in a side alley off Lower Marsh, darting furtive smiles at each other like conspirators. Neither touching nor speaking, we were slowly getting into character. I found myself staring at his hands, those long, elegant fingers I knew so well, and imagined that I’d never been touched by them, never had them inside me, coaxing pleasure out of every inch of my skin. The otherness of Oliver, which in the past had rendered me half-crazy with want, had been subsumed by years of yearning and months of passionate lovemaking. It was both odd and incredibly arousing to recreate it, even if only for one night.

I suspect he was experiencing the same emotions because he was gazing at my lips with the same famished insistence.

We took the Northern Line at Waterloo and in ten minutes we were in Leicester Square. As predicted, the bouncer at the door took one look at Oliver and let him in.

Inside we kept close enough not to lose sight of each other, but otherwise we acted as if we had never met before.

Subway was its usual mix of leather, sweat, blinding disco strobes and an all-pervading cloud of smoke.

Within minutes, I was sweating and I had not even danced yet.

I caught a glimpse of Oliver moving with abandon to the notes of _Don’t Leave Me This Way_ , his eyes closed and his head thrown back. He towered over most of the crowd, and seemed very much at home among that grinding, throbbing mass of men.

My style was always more self-contained, less hedonistic, but I loved the way we complemented each other; it wasn’t easy to watch him from a distance, when all I wanted was to reach out and touch.

I headed to the bar and ordered a vodka with plenty of ice and water. After the second drink, I started to enjoy myself.

When I hit the dance floor _Tainted Love_ was playing and it was so crammed with bodies, it took me a long while to find him. When I did, my heart stopped. He was leaning close to a willowy red-haired boy in leather pants who was talking into Oliver’s ear and had placed a proprietary hand on his shoulder.

 _I don’t like this game, I don’t like this game, no, no, no_ , the voice in my head repeated on a loop. But then Oliver returned my gaze and slowly, while the boy was still trying to capture his attention, he licked his lips and closed his eyes.

I knew at once what he was alluding to and the scene replayed inside my head in vivid colours: two nights ago, he’d asked me to ride him and he had felt so insanely good, I had babbled obscenities, sobbed, told him he was so deep inside me I could feel him in my tummy, that if he came then I was sure I would taste his semen in my mouth. He had licked his lips, bitten them raw and before his eyes had slammed shut, I had seen the flash of white when they had rolled back in his head.

I shivered just thinking about our orgasms, and the next song didn’t help one iota: it was an extended version of _Love to Love You Baby_ , with its chorus of obscene moans.

I let myself go, felt his eyes on me even as mine were closed, swayed as if in a trance; it went on forever, but what woke me suddenly was the press of a body against my back, an unknown presence, which turned out to be a tough-looking biker with bleached hair and a number of ear-piercings. He grasped me by the arm and breathed in my ear. “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he said, voice hoarse from too many cigarettes. “I’d love to tie you up and shag you senseless.”

His words and the music combined into a powerful aphrodisiac but the most important ingredient was missing.

As the song faded to a languorous rendition of _I Feel Love_ , a strong hand closed around my wrist and I resisted it, but then it was Oliver who murmured, “Enough,” and guided me away from the crowd into the underbelly of the club, through the murky back-rooms until we found a disused office with an old sofa and two mouldy armchairs. It was dark except for the security strip-light above the emergency exit. It was so squalid they had not bothered to lock it up.

We were in a similar state: flushed, sweaty and very hard.

“What did that guy say to you?” he asked, and tackled me to the sofa.

I told him, as I parted my legs and let him settle between them.

“Would you like that?”

He was breathless and deliciously undone.

I licked the salt at the base of his throat and along his collarbones.

“Maybe,” and was unable to say more because his tongue was invading my mouth and taking possession of it.

“Tell me,” he asked me, rubbing his groin against mine, all the while undoing the buttons of my shirt and caressing my wet, hot skin.

I did the same to him with shaking fingers, wanting to feel his hair brushing against my chest.

“Tie my hands and feed me your cock,” I replied, licking the underside of his chin.

He let out a string of profanities and collapsed in my arms, his heart beating so fast I could feel its reverberations.

A handful of minutes later, I was naked and on my knees on the floor, Oliver’s belt tying my wrists behind my back, while he was sitting on the edge of sofa, wearing only my unbuttoned shirt, thighs splayed, looking and smelling like pure, distilled sex. Part of me was still lost in our little game, and was marvelling at this god-like specimen in all his glory of golden hair and smudged eyes.

“Pull my hair, hurt me a little.”

I knew he would try to refuse me, but my eyes told him how much I wanted it.

Before he could over-think it, he grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled my face towards his crotch.

Like the first time he’d entered me, it happened with more discomfort that I had anticipated, but the pain transmuted into such pleasure it made me cry and beg for him not to stop, never, never, never, never, and I came untouched as he shot deep inside my throat.

“What did your red-head say?” I asked him later, while he massaged and kissed my wrists.

“Didn’t you guess?”

“He wanted to ride you.”

He nodded and lifted my hand to his cheek so he could lean against it. I caressed him and he smiled softly, the picture of sated happiness.

“And your reply?”

“I told him I was taken.”

Taken.

And then a revelation came to me: that if he was my man, I was his too. Not the boy he'd met, but a man, responsible for my partner's pleasure and pain.


	5. London, April 1987 - Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old friend of Oliver's comes to dinner.  
> He's a bit of a dick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thanks to you all for reading and commenting. Much lovexxx
> 
> Secondly, Elio is really reading Eye of The Needle as we can see from one of the film's stills. It's in Italian, i.e. [La Cruna dell'Ago](https://78.media.tumblr.com/8c340b5a24ba8afcdf09d8092e66941b/tumblr_oxekaxENC41ufqf11o1_1280.jpg)

I have always loved mysteries, both in fiction and real life.

The summer I met Oliver, I had just finished reading Follett’s Eye of The Needle and had been pondering on the nature of dissimulation. The protagonist was a spy who led a double life, but in the end it was not the enemy who defeated him but the woman he loved.

Trapped as I was inside my head, watching Oliver through dazzled, enchanted eyes, I had hardly questioned his other lives, the one he had led before we met and the one he would go back to once we’d separate.

In time, the puzzle pieces had started to coalesce, but there were parts still missing, dark corners where light had yet to be shed.

I relished that unknown side of him but I also feared it, because there was always the shadow of a doubt that I might find proof that I had caused him harm, that in some ways I was one of his defeats rather than a victory.

That evening I was to meet his friend Holden, a dentist from New York, who was coming to London for a conference.

Because of his name -The Catcher in the Rye had obviously been a favourite book of mine when I was younger - I expected someone intellectual and a little shy. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Holden was short, square and muscular with a booming voice and enormous hands with which he slapped Oliver on the back, calling him ‘Ollie’ and ‘buddy’ and ‘dude’.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Elio. I have heard so much about you that I feel like I know you already,” he told me, when he sat down to our table for dinner, the evening before his conference. He pronounced my name as if it should have been Eliot and he could not understand why the ‘t’ had been excised and, despite his friendly tone, he couldn’t quite look me in the eye.

“I’m glad to finally meet one of Oliver’s American friends.”

“Only a short visit, I’m afraid: conference all day tomorrow then straight to the airport. If this wasn't the big European symposium, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

He was as blunt and direct as Vimini, but with none of her eccentricities.

“How is Susan?” Oliver asked, referring to his friend’s wife.

“Suz is just awesome. In fact, we are going to, well we haven’t told anyone yet, you know the three months rule and all that jazz, but anyway, we should have our little present in time for Christmas.”

“Dude, that’s amazing, we have to celebrate!”

“Congratulations,” I chimed in, but it was lost among the back-slapping and raucous laughter. I went to kitchen to grab the bottle of champagne that we’d bought for our guest, a purchase which now seemed serendipitous.

From then on, my evening became cloaked in unreality: I said all the things which were expected of me, asked the right questions and gave appropriate answers, laughed, smiled, drank, nodded savagely and cracked silly jokes; I did all of that, but it was only when I left them on their own and sat down to play the piano that I felt myself again.

My first instinct was to play a transcribed version of Wagner’s Liebestod, but I knew how revealing it would be to Oliver, even if his friend would not have understood that  something was amiss. Or he might have, because he was a slippery man, I thought, one who could easily hide a multitude of secrets. I was confused and tipsy and a bit too dramatic. I chose the Satie I’d used to play for Umberto’s mother and wondered how they were, whether she’d missed me. I had wanted to send her a card at Christmas, but I couldn’t have done that without including her son and I did not want to do that.

All these pointless ceremonies! I hit a key with some violence and felt Oliver’s gaze on me, but I did not look up.

 

“He seems very happy.”

Oliver had gone to prepare the coffee and Holden had come up to me, smoking a Marlboro Light and holding the ashtray in his other hand. He placed the latter carefully on the piano and looked at me with piercing grey eyes. It was the first direct glance we’d exchanged and I stupidly blushed in an unwarranted burst of timidity.

“We are doing great,” I replied, smiling so broadly my cheeks hurt; fakery of the lowest order.

“I have to admit I was worried about him: first leaving New York and then coming to Europe, so far from his family and friends.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“And he’d never mentioned that - you know - that he was bowling for the other team.”

“It was not... we did not expect...”

“Still, he’s made his choice and I wish you both the best, but I have to mention it or I wouldn’t be a good friend to him, that you did ditch him once already and, I mean, I’m not blaming you, but I just hope you aren’t just taking him for a ride, so to speak.”

I glared at him, but even in my anger I knew that he had a point: from where he stood, I was the boy who had Oliver wrapped around his finger and had once wrecked his life over little more than a whim.

“Suz and Alice are friends,” he added, as if that explained everything. When he saw my puzzlement, he shook his head, incredulous.

“He must have told you about Alice, his ex-fiancé?”

“He never told me her name,” I whispered.

“What about Alice?”

Oliver intervened. I had not heard him approach, but I couldn’t say the same for Holden.

“I was just telling Elio that Suz and Alice are friends, but he didn’t have a clue who I was talking about.”

“No point in dredging up the past.”

He was tense, but not angry or defensive, only unwilling to dwell on something he’d given up for good.

“She still loves you, you know?”

“Isn’t she engaged to a Wall Street broker?”

“What's that got to do with anything? He’s a good Jewish boy and you know what her family is like.”

“Yeah, pretty much like mine.”

I felt like I had suddenly become the invisible man, but I resisted the temptation to leave the room; I was ready to fight my battles, I wouldn’t let Oliver do it for me.

“I don’t think you should talk so dismissively about our relationship.”

My fingers - still poised above the keyboard – were steady, devoid of tremors.

“It may not be ideal or what Oliver’s family and friends hoped it would be, but it is real and it matters to us. Are you trying to get him to go back to Alice? Is that why you’ve accepted our invitation to dine here, in _our_ home?”

Holden had the good grace to look chastened; he drank the coffee that Oliver offered him, collecting his thoughts.

I did not hate him or even dislike him, because part of me suspected that he might be right, that perhaps one day Oliver would wake up and wonder why he didn’t have a family of his own, why he had given up so much for so little. But I would not give him more reasons to regret his choice by alienating his nearest and dearest.

“Look, I know you are only looking out for him, but,” I started, and felt the hand I knew so well curl around the back of my neck and squeeze softly.

“I would never go back to Alice, buddy; that part of my life is over, done, _finito_. I sincerely hope she’s not been waiting for me to _get over_ this phase. Or was it my mother who put you up to this? That’d be just her style.”

I couldn’t see his face because he was standing behind me, but his fingers were warm and comforting. I leaned back so that I was resting against him, because I had not touched him all evening, had not wanted to embarrass his friend, but I no longer cared.

Holden let out a dispirited sigh and scratched his head: he was the picture of a little kid caught with his hands in the biscuit tin. Why had I been so tense all night? It was another hurdle that I had to overcome: the past, both recent and remote, would keep intruding in our lives and one day it would cease to matter. It had already started to fade away, whether Holden liked it or not.

“I’m sorry, but it’s just that you were such, no, I better keep my mouth shut!”

“What, a perfect couple? You think? I was in Italy on my own because she hates travelling. We were not unhappy, but that was it. And even if we had been happy, that wouldn’t hold a candle to what I have now. What would you say if I told you to leave Suz and go back to that brunette you were dating six years ago? I remember that your mother was crazy about her. What was her name, Stephanie?”

“Okay, okay, let’s not go there. And I have to admit that you may have met your match: how many languages do you speak?”

“Four.”

“Five if you count Latin,” said Oliver.

“It’s a dead language.”

“It still counts.”

I tilted my head to the side and he caressed my cheek.

“I could tell you that it’s been hard to adjust to living with a younger man, but in truth, it’s been pretty damn great.”

I wanted to kiss him or at least hold him, but it could wait.

“He’s lying. He’s always bossing me around and berating my housekeeping skills.”

Holden chuckled.

“You do sound like a married couple alright. Is he complaining about wet towels in the bathroom and dirty socks under the bed?”

“You have no idea,” I replied, and we all laughed.

The rest of the evening went like a dream and when he left, Holden shook my hand and invited us to his place in the Hamptons.

 

His friend had barely gone when Oliver pushed me against the door and kissed me: his hands were all over me, greedy, insistent, heavenly. After a while, he went down on his knees and took me in his mouth. His tongue did sinful things to me and it wasn’t long before I was exploding down his throat.

“I love you so much,” I murmured when I collapsed into his arms, and it surprised me because I had not said it since that first time over the telephone. Words had always seemed insufficient to define the magnitude of this thing between us; too dead, like Latin, compared to the living and breathing fire within us.

But when I said them, I realised that Oliver had been waiting to hear them spoken again. His eyes were bright when he took my face in his hands.

“I love you, too,” he whispered and smiled through the tears.


	6. London, April 1987 – Friday & Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A double chapter, because I couldn't leave you in suspense after the Friday part.
> 
> More confrontations with the past, because you can't move forward in life unless you've slain all the dragons of your past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thanks again for reading and commenting; you are good people!
> 
> French expressions:  
> \- mon pote: my friend  
> \- ferme-la: shut up  
> \- va te faire foutre: go get f*cked.
> 
> I did not invent the Fallen Angel or its poetry nights :)

I should have known better, that’s what I told myself afterwards.

Pierre was a good friend of mine, but he was not one for life, such as Marzia or Vimini. He was the kind that always looks after number one first and foremost. And in his case number one was his sexual life, the guys he dated and he fell madly in love with for as long as it lasted, which was always no longer than a handful of months.

That day Oliver had gone to Cambridge to chair a public event and because that was followed by a dinner which he also had to attend, he wasn’t due to come back until Saturday afternoon.

I had lectures which I couldn’t miss, so it was to be our first night apart since the one when he’d come back to me.

Naturally, that was a chance Pierre wasn’t going to miss.

He invited me to the Fallen Angel, which was holding a queer poetry evening. It would have been nothing out of the ordinary for Oliver and me: we enjoyed going there and had spent a number of wonderful evenings half-tipsy on Shelley and pints of bitter.

But for Pierre, who preferred discos, saunas and getting laid as often and publicly as he could, the Islington pub was an unusual departure from the norm.

I thought he was doing it for me, and in part he was, because he knew I would love the Rimbaud-Verlaine-themed evening.

The potency of the verse was undimmed even in translation, but I did miss the punch in the gut the originals always gave me, especially recalling the emotions they had stirred the first time I’d read them at school, when I was only eleven years old.

Oh, to invent a language from nothing, I remember thinking, wistfully and with a dash of envy.

“They shouldn’t have translated them,” Pierre agreed, mainly due to his fierce patriotism rather than because he really objected to the English version.

“Many of the guys here don’t speak French.”

“They should learn. What’s the problem with knowing more than one language?”

“Don’t ask me, I don’t make the rules, _mon pote_.”

“You sound like my father.”

“ _Ferme-la_.”

We sat down at a table at the far end of the room, not too close to the small platform on which the performers were standing; they were dressed in the existentialist uniform, black turtle-necks and jeans, and reading from a hardback volume placed on a ledger.

Initially, I was so immersed in the poetry that I did not perceive Pierre’s restlessness. He was distracted, constantly looking around and darting glances towards the doors: waiting for someone, clearly.

“Who is it this time?” I asked, but before he could reply I saw him.

He was trying to make his way through the tightly packed room without spilling his drink: his hair was longer and he seemed even more muscle-bound, but here was undeniably Oliver’s ex, Tim.

 

I did not know where to look or what to say, because the first thing he did, even before saying hello, was to lean down and kiss Pierre on the mouth, tongues and everything. A show only for my benefit, or so it appeared to me, but was my friend aware of it? I really couldn’t tell. Anyway, I wasn’t going to play along; I might have months ago, but I knew where Oliver and I stood now: on firm land, the strongest of foundations, not a fracture in sight.

“What’s this charade?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.

“I thought we should meet, because to be quite honest you fucked me over and I never had the chance to respond.”

His face was polite and blank, but his frame was powerfully built and intimidating, in a similar way to Oliver’s. Touching him for the first time had been so daunting for me precisely because of his statuary appearance, a solidity which exuded masculinity and self-sufficiency. Once the veneer had cracked, Oliver had been warm and passionate, generous in words and deeds, but I had the distinct impression that Tim was colder and more calculating. But perhaps I was being unfair, considering what I had taken from him.

“That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? You could have told me,” I said to Pierre.

“I didn’t want you to speak of it to Oliver. And I know you wouldn’t have made a scene in here.”

“I don’t make scenes.”

“You do. You are Mister Drama queen.”

“You’ve organised this little farce and I am the Drama queen! _Va te faire foutre_!”

At this point we were told to keep it down, so Tim proposed we moved to the little room upstairs.

I could have said my goodbyes and left, but as always my curiosity got the better of me. In order to be conciliatory, Pierre bought another round of pints; so, glasses in hand we climbed the worn-out wooden staircase, in single file.

 

It was like living inside a surrealist painting: couples were making out on the faded velvet sofas; a smell of damp, piss and hash smoke seemed to permeate the entire room; the three of us sat across a square table stained with heaven-knows-what: I, on my own and Tim with Pierre draped all over him, kissing and fondling him while we talked of Oliver.

“I’m sorry,” I started, even though I didn’t mean it. I had Oliver first, after all; I was the one who spoke, the one who reached out and took what was to become mine.

“You have no idea of the state he was in when we first met. I bet he didn’t tell you that he’d started to smoke pot every night; he couldn’t sleep otherwise, he told me. He fucked around a lot; he was careful, but you never know these days, do you? You can have your eyes wide open ninety-nine times and then that one time your focus slips... Did he tell you about our friend at the gym?”

“The one who passed away, yes, he did.”

“Passed away, such a gentle way of describing the agony George was in. And we saw it happen. I suppose you’ve never seen a friend wasting away in horrible pain...”

“No, no, and I am sure it was terrible, but what...”

“What does it have to do with you and Oliver? Perhaps nothing, but I was there when he couldn’t sleep, I was there when he was feeling like shit and I put him back together. Next thing I know, the Little Prince swoops in and pinches what’s not his.”

I was starting to feel a bit queasy, but I would not give him the satisfaction of showing my discomfort.

“Oliver is not a thing; he’s a person, with a mind of his own. I did not force him to do anything, I did not push him.”

Tim snorted a laugh, and Pierre kissed him on the cheek: he was gone, utterly lost in a cloud of sexual desire.

“You did not push him! Didn’t you cry on his shoulder? When was it, just before Christmas?”

How did he know that? There was only one way: if Oliver had told him. But why would he have told him?

“He said you were desperate and that he felt sorry for you.”

“You think he left you because he felt sorry for me? You can’t really believe that!”

He lighted two cigarettes and offered me one; I was about to say no, but I wanted to smoke and it would have been childish to refuse. After a moment, he grimaced and stared intently at the surface of the table: a strong wave of emotion rippled underneath his apparent composure; anger, sorrow or a mixture of both, I couldn’t tell.

“Oliver is a romantic: he believes the heart wants what it wants, and because it wanted you first, he can’t see what’s in front of him.”

“Which is?”

He threw me a contemptuous glare.

“A spoilt little kid who’s never had to work hard for his money or see any real suffering.”

“I don’t think I should apologise for the way I was brought up.”

“Maybe not, but you and Oliver have nothing in common, aside from your cleverness and that’s not difficult to find is it? Now he thinks he loves you, but wait until something pricks your rosy bubble.”

“When his father died, you were not with him.”

“I wanted to go, but he didn’t want me to. And we both know why.”

“I would have gone anyway!” I shouted, shaking Pierre from his erotic trance. “If we had been together, nothing would have stopped me from getting on that plane, nothing! What do you want from us anyway? Aren’t you with him now?”

Tim let out a malicious, ugly chuckle.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t try to steal your precious boyfriend. I wouldn’t want him if he crawled back to me. I only needed you to know that I was there when he needed to talk about Alice, about his father and even about you: don’t ever believe that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t matter.”

I stood up and threw a tenner on the table, to pay for my drinks.

“I never want to see you or hear from you again.”

I left without even saying goodbye to my traitorous friend.

 

When I got home, the flat seemed even emptier and darker.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I debated on whether to drink myself to oblivion or cut that long story short by ingesting a pill: I chose the latter.

It knocked me out until late morning and before I even opened my eyes, I knew that I wasn’t alone: I could smell Oliver’s scent, that musky, earthy fragrance which always dissolved my already flimsy barriers. I reached out and my hand collided with his naked chest.

“Hi,” I murmured, and he leaned down to kiss my shoulder.

“Why the pills?” he asked, and I could see his frown even my eyes still shut.

Damn me and my untidiness.

“I couldn’t sleep without you. You are early,” I added, trying to change the subject.

“Maybe I had the same problem,” he whispered, moving downward to lick the small of my back.

I knew what he was about to do, and I got even harder than I already was, but I was also certain that I could not let the memories of the previous evening fester between us, unsaid. I intended to tell my story in darkness, so I did not open my eyes.

“I saw Tim last night.”

He froze, moved away from me, lay down on his side of the bed.

“Where,” he asked.

He was on his guard, worried, afraid some untold damage had been done. I explained Pierre’s silly ruse and mentioned that he was Tim’s current boyfriend, sort of.

“He had things he needed to get off his chest. The usual: I’m too young for you, too much money, not enough suffering, wouldn’t know how to cope, blah, blah, blah. And he said you told him I was desperate, that I cried on your shoulder and you felt sorry for me. He was nasty, but,”

“I never said you were desperate, but that evening when I went home to him I was determined to break up with him and he wouldn’t let me speak. I told him point blank that I needed you and you needed me, and that I couldn’t stand having to leave you while you were in pain. He must have put two and two together.”

“I’m tired of people telling me I’m not good for you.”

“They don’t know us, not really.”

“You told him about Alice and about me, when you two first got together.”

“I was in a bad place and trying to pretend everything was fine. He was the only one who didn’t believe me. I can’t deny that he was there for me and that it meant something.”

“Do you still love him?” I asked, and couldn’t breathe.

“When I think of him, it’s like he’s been gone for years, like a distant friend. I wish him well, but I always knew that our relationship wasn’t going to last. Not enough in common.”

I laughed. “He said the same about us.”

“That just proves my point. By the way, your friend Pierre is in serious trouble. Tell him to keep out of my way for a while.”

“He’s completely gone on Tim.”

“Even more reason to stay away.”

“He only thinks with his dick.”

Oliver chuckled and, at last, he pulled me into his arms.

“Can’t say I disagree with him at the moment,” he said, grinding against my crotch.

“You were only gone for a day.”

“And a night. Let’s not do that again.”

I finally looked at him and saw his tired eyes and gaunt face.

“No, let’s not,” I agreed and teased his lips with mine, until his mouth opened and let me in. His tongue touched mine and it was like the first time, only more intense; wet, fevered kisses which left us breathless.

“What is this?” I asked, feeling swollen with want, barely able to form words.

“I don’t know,” he replied, looking as lost as I had never seen him.

Like that afternoon when I had put on his bathing suit, I wanted him to slip inside me, to become one with his flesh and blood. I was partially under the effect of the opiates and felt pliant, as malleable as clay. I trailed filthy kisses down his throat and across his chest then went back to his mouth again, burying both hands in his hair, tousling it thoroughly.

“I want to be inside you,” Oliver said, voice rough with awe and yearning.

“Yes, please,” I replied, rolling on the mattress until I was on my back, feet on the bed, legs open wide. I was so hard my balls were aching. He smiled when he heard me groan, tender and comforting: he was there for me, would give me the stars and the moon if I asked. This wasn’t a time for teasing or slow lovemaking: Oliver was as desperate for it as I was. He sucked me in earnest, fingering me with hastily lubed up fingers, all the while humming and trying to look me in the eye; that extra connection was too much, we couldn’t hold it without wanting to kiss on the mouth.

When he pushed into me, I was moaning without restraint, uttering profanities and endearments, my hands everywhere at once, trying to make him fall even deeper into me.

“I’m not gonna last,” he muttered after a few deep thrusts, kissing my throat, and working my cock with his usual finesse. His thighs were trembling and his heart was beating like a drum.

“Do it, do it, do it,” I babbled, and he thrust hard, making the bed-frame rattle. He was still stroking me when he came and his orgasm triggered mine, violent and soul-deep.

 

“I can’t be without you at night, not yet; in time, perhaps, but not for a while.”

We were drinking orange juice in bed, legs tangled and feet touching.

I caressed his neck and played with his Star of David.

“I won’t be always running into your exes, I hope.”

“You couldn’t, since he’s the only one in London.”

“He said you were not very careful with your health, when he met you.”

“I was reckless, but not to the point of not using protection. You’re the first one, the only one,”

“Yes, the only one,” I agreed, closing my eyes to savour the dizziness which had followed our lovemaking.

I didn’t know what that had been, that scorching intensity which we had felt earlier, but it was the closest experience of divinity I'd ever had. As if my heart had been flooded with pure ecstasy, overflowing into each and every cell of my body.

And the thing is: I was certain that Oliver had felt it too, and we didn’t need words to be spoken.


	7. London, May 1987 – Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marzia comes to London for a brief visit.
> 
> Oliver is still jealous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kettner's (which has closed its doors last year) was purchased in 1980 by the owner of Pizza Express.
> 
> Please consider that Elio and Marzia are speaking French while alone. I wasn't gonna write half of the chapter with translation :)

That early May bank holiday the weather was so cold it could have been November.

It was during that long week-end that Marzia was coming to London to visit with some friends.

She had called me out of the blue one night in April, announcing that she would like to see us, maybe go out for dinner or drinks. After a brief conversation, we had agreed to meet on the Sunday and have dinner at Kettner’s in Soho.

“You should go without me,” said Oliver. “I would only be in the way. I can’t speak French and she has the same problem with English. I’m sure she’ll be more at ease if I’m not there.”

He was leafing through the latest issue of The New Yorker, looking for an article written by a friend of his about the trial of Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, so he wasn’t in the best of moods.

“Don’t you want to see her?”

“I doubt she’ll want to see me.”

“I said we would take her out to dinner.”

“Okay, but I still think she’d be happier if you two went out on your own.”

At the time I had not insisted, convinced that he’d change his mind, but he had not. He had to prepare one of his lectures anyway, so he’d spend the time working. You two enjoy yourselves, he said, and he reminded me to give her the book of poems by Christina Rossetti that we’d bought for her as a present.

“I still think you should come,” I insisted, kissing him goodbye.

“I wrote her a note; it’s inside the book.”

It wouldn’t do to insist, that much I knew, so I gave him one last kiss and left.

 

Kettner’s was extremely busy and the bar was even more packed, but I managed to order a couple of vodka-lemon and find a corner where we could speak while we waited for our table to be ready.

“This is very grand, Elio. We could have gone to Pizza Express,” Marzia said, her eyes shining merrily above the rim of her glass.

She had cut her hair short in a French bob and with her short black dress and heels she looked very elegant and grown-up. I felt younger in comparison, more of a boy than I usually felt in Oliver’s company.

“I imagined you’d like to see the place where Oscar Wilde used to dine.”

She smiled and nodded.

“Where’s Oliver?”

I explained why he’d decided not to come and told her about the note inside the book. Immediately, she unwrapped the package and found the small envelope with the card in question. There were white and yellow roses on the front and he had written a few words inside.

“What does he say?”

“Only that he hopes I’ll enjoy these poems and our night out.”

Not for the first time I wondered whether he’d left us alone for a reason other than his inability to speak French; a sort of test, to see whether I would be unfaithful, given half a chance. Did he not understand that I couldn’t even contemplate the possibility of touching another body that wasn’t his? Had I really hurt him so irrevocably that summer when I had gone from him to her and vice-versa without giving it a thought?

“He had some work to do and he wanted us to chat freely.”

“My English is improving. I’m taking private lessons.”

She wasn’t offended at Oliver’s snub; in fact, she was happy that we were alone so that we could gossip about our old friends back home and our respective families.

During dinner we never spoke of what had happened between us that summer, but later we went to a pub close by and a few beers down the line we started to unwind.

“The first time you were so quick it must have been almost a Guinness record,” she joked, giggling like she had done that night.

“I was so horny I would have come if you’d stroked my knee.”

“The second time was a lot better, even though you didn’t say a word.”

“The radio was playing.”

“You were looking at your watch all the time. Did you think I hadn’t noticed? I thought it was to do with your dinner engagement with those two family friends, but it was Oliver, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You were counting down the hours: how romantic.”

She was laughing at me, but in a fond way.

“It was our first time together.”

“Was it good?”

I nodded, because I couldn’t find the words to explain the events of that night, but also because it would have been a kind of desecration to even try.

“Were you already in love with him when you slept with me?”

“No, I don’t think I was. I liked him and wanted him, but I was very confused.”

“I can imagine what he went through when you left him in San Francisco.”

She lighted a cigarette and offered me one.

“He hasn’t told me much about it. He doesn’t like talking about his past.”

“Maybe you should insist. If he doesn’t tell you, he will confide in somebody else.”

“He already did.”

I told her about Tim and the episode at the Fallen Angel.

“You two have a talent for driving people crazy.”

“Did I drive you crazy?”

Marzia exhaled a wisp of smoke and smiled.

“I knew you’d hurt me and I was right, but I wasn’t angry. You know that already, I told you before you left for the States.”

“Yes, but it’s nice to hear it again.”

He hand was resting on the table; I covered it with mine and squeezed it briefly.

“Do you still like girls?” she asked, looking me straight in the eye.

“Maybe, but it’s hard to tell.”

“Are you faithful then?”

Was she really asking or was it only a joke?

“Yes,” I replied, but what I really meant was: “I don’t need to be faithful because I only _see_ Oliver.” I didn’t say it because it seemed cruel.

“You look good.”

She leaned closer and ruffled my hair. I was more than tipsy and her proximity elicited a sudden burst of sensuality due to the alcohol and the memory of past intimacies. After that came desire, but not for her; it was Oliver I wanted.

“Come see our flat. We’ll drink coffee and I’ll play the piano. He’ll be done working by now.”

Marzia stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and stood up to go.

“What if he’s sleeping already?”

“We’ll wake him up.”

 

We got on the Northern Line and when we arrived at Waterloo it was only past eleven.

“Won’t he be upset that you’re coming home with me?” Marzia asked, while we climbed the stairs to the flat.

“No, of course not,” I replied, but I wasn’t sure what Oliver’s reaction would be. Correction: I knew he wouldn’t be upset, that he would welcome her and treat her like a friend, but I couldn’t tell whether deep inside he still suspected me of double-dealing, of harbouring hidden desires for her.

He was sitting at his desk, correcting the typewritten pages with his Montblanc pen and drinking red wine.

His blond hair was mussed where he’d raked his fingers through it and his feet were bare. The moment before he turned to greet us, I felt that frisson of possessiveness I always experienced when I came upon him unaware and perceived the vulnerability of his body: the soft skin of his ankles, the back of his neck.

He rose and came toward us with an unreadable expression on his face; he bent down and planted a kiss on both of Marzia’s cheeks; she reciprocated, in the continental manner.

We sat down on the sofa and accepted a glass of wine, even though we’d had quite enough to drink already.

“I love your place. It’s very cosy,” she said, looking at the sparse furnishings and mounting piles of books.

“Another word for tiny and crammed, but that’s London for you,” Oliver replied, studying her closely.

“You don’t like it?” she asked in her heavily-accented English.

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean I can’t see past its faults. Plumbing is atrocious and there’s rising damp everywhere.”

“Spoken like a true American,” I intervened.

“Do you ever think about going back?”

Oliver seemed to seriously ponder her question.

“I miss it sometimes, but the way things are at present, no, I don’t think I want to.”

Between us hovered the unspoken question about my willingness to move to the States. Oliver had never asked me and we were so happy I didn’t want to rock the boat.

“What about you?” he asked, smiling to lessen the abruptness of the question.

“I’m going to stay in Milan until I graduate then I plan to move to Paris. My uncle lives in the Marais,” she explained. “You could come and visit me.”

“That would be great,” I said. We’d not been anywhere yet and the idea of travelling together as a couple was very exciting. Oliver glanced at me briefly and we exchanged a complicit smile. He had remembered how elated we’d been during our trip to Rome and how carefree.

“Play something for us,” Marzia said, daring me to say no. I pretended to be coy, but soon I sat at the piano and started playing my transcribed version of the Sonata by Solo Cello by Ligeti. It was a naughty choice, because the composer had written it for a fellow woman student with whom he was secretly in love.

When I finished and turned around, I noticed the blank, indifferent expression on Oliver’s face which I had now come to recognise; he was on the defensive, sensing trouble. I would disabuse him of the notion later, but I thought it was time he learned to trust me and quit believing I would betray him if only the occasion presented itself.

Marzia had not caught any of the subtext; she had enjoyed the piece, but was tired and due to wake up early on the following day.

We called her a taxi which Oliver insisted to pay for and waited for the bell to ring.

“Thanks for the poems. I will let you know what I think of them,” she said, hugging Oliver and kissing his cheek.

“Yes, please do,” he replied, smiling politely.

“Write to me,” she said to me and before I could reply, she was gone.

 

“How was dinner?”

Oliver was preparing tea and I had joined him in the kitchen to get a glass of water.

“You’d have known if you’d bothered to come.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know _exactly_ what it means. You thought you’d leave us alone: food, alcohol; shake the mixture for a few hours and see what happens.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not true.”

Silence. Avoidance. The noise of the kettle boiling. More silence.

“I’m going to sleep,” I said, and left him there.

 

When he came to bed ten minutes later, I was still upset. The rage had seemingly come out of nowhere. While I had been playing, it had been only a pin-prick of annoyance, but his denial had inflated it into full-blown anger.

“I’m still afraid to lose you,” he whispered, his breath tickling the hair on my nape. Just like that, the rage evaporated. I rolled over and lay on my back, opening my arms in an invitation which he immediately accepted; he rested his head on my chest and rubbed his cheek against it.

“What can I do to convince you,” I asked and felt him shake his head.

“Time should help.”

“Yes,” I said, and ran my fingers through his hair.

After a while, when I thought he’d fallen asleep, I told him what I had felt in the pub.

“I wanted you so badly and I still do,” I murmured, and it was true that even while I had been so incensed with him, I had been hard all along, even more so after I had gazed at his bare feet and tousled hair. There’s no cure for this, I thought, planning to masturbate in the bathroom. Suddenly I felt the mattress shake: Oliver was laughing.

“You seriously thought I was sleeping,” he gasped, and started tickling me everywhere. We tumbled and rolled about for a while until our groins collided and the fighting devolved into frotting and kissing and two wonderful orgasms.

“Come here,” he said after we’d cleaned up, and curled around my back.

“Stop using me as a pillow.”

“You love that.”

And yes, I did, and loved him, more than he would ever know.

But while we were making love, a plan had started forming in my head, involving Denmark and the only form of marriage possible between men.


	8. London, May 1987 – Monday (the morning after)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn't a real chapter, but more of a coda to the previous one (which was already too long).
> 
> Elio and Oliver finally use words to tell each other the things that really matter. Words and sex ;)

I woke up early with a sensation of anguish clawing at my throat.

During the course of the night we had moved around and now Oliver was lying face down, and since I had appropriated the duvet there was not a stitch on him.

The memories of the previous evening resurfaced in my mind and with them a fierce wave of lust mixed with tenderness and a tinge of pain. I was no longer angry, but it stung me that Oliver would think me potentially unfaithful. Even though I was concocting a plan to show him how wrong he was, it didn’t mean he should not be taught a lesson; and if the lesson coincided with getting rid of my ever-persistent arousal, better still.

I was under no illusion the he would stay asleep for long, but I trailed my fingers along his spine as lightly as I could, a brush more than a caress, until I reached his loins; I laid my hand on the small of his back, my palm almost magnetised by the warmth of his skin.

Just below was the rounded perfection of his buttocks and the enticing seam in the middle, which I had dreamed of so frequently when his body was still a mystery to me.

Apricot, I thought, and in my mind’s eye I saw him gulping down the thick fruit juice with greed and relish, saw him pluck the fruit from the trees, his swimsuit revealing at once too much and too little. The smell of him, which I had imbibed from his red suit when I put my head inside it, had intoxicated me, made me lose each and every inhibition; I wanted it again and again, now even more because it belonged to me and to me only.

I bent down and sucked a wet kiss at the top of his cleft.

“What are you doing?” he murmured, sleepy amusement in his tone.

“Tasting you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Testing a theory then?”

“What theory?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“I could get up and take a shower.”

I licked the patch of skin I had just kissed.

“But you won’t,” I said, and pinched the rounded flesh.

“But I won’t,” he replied, as he opened his eyes to look at me; our gazes met: he was daring me, but not aggressively; he was giving in to my desires, asking me to submit to them.

Without breaking our connection, I slipped the tip of a finger inside him, worked it in and out, teasing. His hips jerked and his lashes shivered like a frayed cobweb.

I kissed his eyelids and whispered sweet nothings which made him smile then I pressed my lips to his shoulder and down again, until I was back where I started.

By this point, I was very hard and wet, but before I entered him, I wanted to do to him what I had done to his suit. I pulled my finger out and, parting his buttocks, pushed my face into the core of him, my mouth open wide, tongue lapping at his rim, dirty, hungry, invasive.

Oliver was uttering words I couldn’t hear, only once I discerned my name, or was it his? I couldn’t tell.

When I reached for the lubricant, he came up on his knees and elbows and the sight of him was gratifyingly obscene, like a lewd painting of the Victorian era or a glossy photo on a porn magazine; that brief spell of sheer eroticism what immediately cast aside when I caught a glimpse of Oliver’s long fingers splayed on the pillow: so strong and yet so delicate, I mused, and the thought brought tears of gratitude and love to my eyes. And yet when I leaned closer to touch his hand, I was greeted by the musk of his sweat and lust slammed into me like a sucker-punch.

This time, I put two fingers into him and he devoured them, so I knew I didn’t have to wait long to be fully enveloped by him.

I didn’t even try to go slowly, because Oliver pushed back as soon he felt the head of my cock touch his rim. He was begging me with his body if not with his voice, so I drove into him with a violence matched by his grunts and groans. At the height of my frenzy, I slapped one of his buttocks and we both froze. I felt his muscles clench tightly and his breath quicken. “Yes,” he moaned, and with my next thrust, his whole body convulsed and trembled, as his orgasm peaked, causing mine to erupt soon after.

 

“Good morning,” I said, once I was able again to breathe and talk at the same time.

Oliver laughed and caressed my stomach and abdomen.

“It certainly was. What was the theory?”

“Something about your smell and the crotch of your bathing suit.”

“Still sick and twisted,” he said, as I laid my head on his shoulder.

“Always”

In the silence that followed, I felt that he was on the verge of saying something important.

“I’m sorry about yesterday, about Marzia and not being honest with you.”

“What we have scares me too, but it doesn’t mean I will walk away from it like I did before. I’m not interested in the alternative, don’t you see?”

His hand found mine and guided it to where his heart was thudding.

“I _do_ _see_ , Elio, but understanding has little to do with this kind of fear.”

“And what I just did to you, did that help?”

His lips curved into a wicked smile.

“That would resuscitate me if I were dead.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“Because I have only done that with you?”

“Maybe.”

More than once the thought had occurred to me that he let me be his top just to indulge me, even though his pleasure had always been plentiful and eloquent.

He tilted my face up in order to look into my eyes.

“It drives me crazy when you lose control. Just like the first time you kissed me.”

“You held back.”

I knew it would make him smile that I still held that grudge.

“Not anymore. And you shouldn’t either.”

“Your body drives me crazy,” I said, stroking his chest, “Your smell, the way you feel when I touch you, your hair against my flesh, all of you.”

Oliver’s heart kicked beneath my palm; his face was tense with emotion.

“I never want you to stay just because you think you have to,” he said, and I kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead.

“Goose,” I murmured, and held him tight.


	9. London, May 1987 – Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cinema, dinner and sex: what's not to like?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maurice, directed by James Ivory (from E.M. Forster's novel) was released in 1987.

“I think he made a big mistake,” said Petri’s girlfriend Katja. She was the latest in a long string of conquests and I didn’t believe she was going to last long.

“Who did, that Clive character?” he said, while Oliver and I shared a glance and a smile before tucking into our pizzas. This was going to be fun, I thought, and knew he felt the same. We were used to Petri’s mock distracted way and we had witnessed many arguments and fights which had started in a similar vein.

We had been to the NFT to see the new Ivory film, Maurice, and were now having dinner on the South Bank in the evening of what had been a joyously sunny, warm day.

Katja was an Austrian law student with the looks of a sulky model but the temperament and inclinations of a Thatcherite. My friend wasn’t exactly a Marxist, but there were limits to how much conservatism and bigotry he could take.

Oliver’s foot was nudging mine under the table. I smiled, and squeezed his knee.

It was code and it meant we weren’t going to say anything until the conversation started unravelling.

“Nah, I meant the game-keeper. He should have been on that boat,” she replied, lighting a cigarette from the one Petri was smoking. Some of the ash floated around before falling snow-like inside her beer glass. He was about to warn her, but sucked on his cigarette instead.

“Well, maybe, but it would have meant leaving the person he loved behind.”

She rolled her cerulean eyes and ate a forkful of penne all'arrabbiata.

“It was still a crime to be with another man, back then.”

“I’m sure people found way to make it work; difficult but not impossible.”

“The Clive character, as you called him, he got it right: marry a woman, do your business on the side.”

Oliver arched both his eyebrows but said nothing. Petri looked at me mouthing the word ‘sorry’, a gesture which Katja immediately seized upon.

“What have I said that’s so terrible? It was the most sensible thing to do at the time: pretend you were normal and do your other stuff in the wings. Live and let live.”

“ _Pretend_ you were normal?” her boyfriend asked.

“Yes, come on: married with a nice girl and have some kids too, if possible.”

“So that’s what you consider normal,” he insisted.

She took a sip from her glass and he looked away. Next to me, Oliver was cutting his Napoletana with surgical precision, a tell-tale sign of his internal turmoil. Despite his self-assurance and bravado, I knew that his mother’s and late father’s disapproval still hurt him badly. My parents had duly sent her an invitation to visit them over the summer and I was hoping to receive good news in time for Oliver’s birthday on the following week-end.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said, brandishing her fork and pointing it in Petri’s direction, “You are trying to twist my words in order to make me sound like a monster. That’s the way of the world: a man and a woman marry and have kids and that’s how the human race survives. This is normality, the other options are less than normal, whether you like it or not. Maurice and his gamekeeper will not live happily ever after because they are on the outside of society.”

“Society will only change if people change. A world full of Clives is a world without progress.”

She shook her head and her shiny blonde hair, wavy and thick, caressed her heart-shaped face: I understood why Petri was attracted to her, but why he saw her outside of the bedroom was more difficult to comprehend.

“You can’t change biology,” she said. “It’s a fact that two men can’t procreate, so no matter what you say, their relationship will never be considered equal to the heterosexual one.” She finally seemed to notice our silence and the reason behind it, but wasn’t in the least repentant.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said, extinguishing her cigarette with vigour. “I have nothing against your way of life, but,”

“It isn’t a way of life,” Petri interjected. He was on his third pint already and wasn’t drunk, not even tipsy, but his patience always dwindled to nothing when alcohol flooded his bloodstream. “You don’t choose to have blue eyes or red hair.”

Katja tucked a curl behind her ear and pursed her lips: I could imagine her doing that one day before interrogating a suspect during a trial.

“You can’t seriously compare that to being a homosexual.”

“It is the same thing.”

“How would you know?”

Petri’s green eyes opened wide as he stared at us, waiting for our intervention.

I swallowed, cleared my throat and turned to glance at Oliver, who was devouring his pizza without any apparent care in the world. He was annoyed but not offended or hurt by her words. Her opinion didn’t matter to him and he would not waste his breath on someone he didn’t like or care for.

As for me, my only real concern was about children: the ones we couldn’t have and whose absence one day Oliver might regret. But that wasn’t something I was going to discuss in front of Katja.

“You meet someone, you get to know them and fall in love. It’s not really a matter of choice,” I said.

“You can choose not to act on it.”

“You could dye your hair black, but at the roots it'd still be blonde.”

“Petri told me you have been with girls, so you could fall in love with a woman and marry her.”

“No, trust me, I couldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

Petri fumbled inside his wallet and fished out a banknote which he slammed down on the table.

“Plenty of cabs on the Waterloo Bridge,” he said, glaring at her, “You won’t have a problem getting home.”

“Oh, sod off,” she replied, lighting another cigarette. She threw the money back at him and, without saying goodbye, stomped out of the restaurant.

“The dinner is on me,” Petri said, looking mortified.

“No way, you already have to pay her share,” I said.

“Where did you find her?” asked Oliver, with genuine incredulity.

“She’s very good in bed. I met her at a party in Camden; she was stoned at the time, so she didn’t say much.”

Petri was a great guy, but he had a bit of a penchant for domineering women.

“Was it the first time you met her out of bed?”

“Not the first, but certainly the last. The film was great though wasn’t it?” he said, and ordered another round of beers.

 

When we finally came out of the restaurant, we were drunk but still capable of walking home. We said goodnight to Petri and parted ways at the Embankment Bridge.

I wanted to hold Oliver’s hand, and in my dazed state, it seemed imperative that I should. When we laced our fingers together, I knew I wanted more contact with his skin that he was currently providing. I tried to hug him, but he stopped me.

“Lots of people around,” he said, “This isn’t Soho.”

“You hugged me that time in Spitalfields,” I protested.

“You were crying.”

“I will cry now if you don’t hug me.”

He started laughing and it came out as a series of snorts and chuckles. He was quite gone too but not gone enough to embrace me, evidently.

We had reached the arches by the station and they were shrouded in darkness.

“What if we go there, would you do it then?”

He shook his head and assumed an innocent expression, like he’d never entertained the possibility of sin.

“If I hug you, you’ll look at me that way you do and I won’t be able to resist you.”

“What way?” Our hands were still interlinked and I was staring at our fingers trying to understand which was which: I couldn’t.

“You throw your head back and stare at me with your mouth open.”

“Unattractive,” I grimaced.

“Very attractive.”

“You are the handsome one and I am the wise one, remember?”

I tried to pull him towards the arches, but it was all in vain.

“Why are you doing this to me,” I whined, throwing my body at him. It was like trying to displace a mountain.

“I don’t want anyone to call you names because of me.”

“What, like fag or poof? I don’t care.”

“Like abnormal. You are perfectly normal.”

“Do you care so much about what people like Katja think?”

“I care about you.”

The red neon of a billboard bathed us in rosy light, as we stared at each other.

And then came a moment of pure clarity: I finally understood – not intellectually, but physically and with my entire being, flesh and blood and soul – what it was that pushed men into battle or into burning buildings, what made them do things that were utterly insensate and yet absolutely right. I was about to do something silly like going down on one knee and ask Oliver to marry me, to spend his life with me and perhaps even longer than that, when he finally pulled me to his chest.

“Let’s go home,” he whispered, and I could feel his hot palms scorching the skin of my shoulder blades.

I don’t know how we made it home without incidents, but when we got inside our flat we didn’t even bother to switch on the lights.

I pushed his back against the door and started working on the buttons of his shirt. He was wearing royal blue silk, cool to the touch but saturated with his scent, a heady mix of Missoni, smoke and fresh sweat. When I was done, I realised he’d done the same to me and that his hands were roaming front and back along my bare skin. I rubbed my face across his chest while I unzipped his trousers, eager to get him naked.

We didn’t even make it to the sofa, but lay down on the floor on top of our discarded clothes. My memories are a bit hazy but I remember licking between his legs and I can still feel the pressure of his long fingers on my dick and around my throat.

 

“I really need a shower,” Oliver gasped, when we finally collapsed on the couch, sweaty and red-faced.

“Stay for a moment,” I said, nuzzling the hollow of his throat. I had stubble burn on my cheeks but I couldn’t care less.

“You little pervert,” he chuckled, caressing my hair.

We kissed on the lips, softly, sweetly.

“The film was beautiful.”

“Yes, it was. Ivory is a genius.”

“And the actor who played Maurice...hmm.”

Oliver tugged at my curls.

“You have a type,” he joked.

“Okay, maybe I like blondes, but you must have a type too.”

He seemed to ponder the question.

“In the past, but I don’t know. When I met you, and I know it may sound absurd, it was like I had finally found what I had been searching. Like all the other faces and bodies before yours were lacking something, but I had not known what.”

“No, not absurd since I felt the same. I remember thinking that I had been fiddling with the wrong combination for years and with you, I had found the right key.”

“We are disgustingly romantic when we are drunk.”

“I also dreamed of coming into your mouth.”

He laughed and kissed the top of my head.

“You must have read my mind,” he said, and more than ever I was certain that I was lucky, that I had chosen him well, my Oliver.


	10. London, May 1987 – Tuesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet Elio's cousin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank Glazer was a famous pianist who recorded all of Satie's works, including the piece played by Elio in the film.

“Tim dumped you then?” I asked Pierre over cappuccino and muffins. We were sitting at one of the tables outside a busy coffee shop on the Kingsway, waiting for my cousin to arrive.

“I dumped him. _J’en avais marre_. He was always busy with his stupid job and plus he was still obsessed with Oliver. I mean, I know he’s very good-looking and clever and whatever, but why are you all so fixated with this guy?”

“I’m not fixated, he’s my boyfriend.”

“I have boyfriends too, but don’t you get bored of finding the same man in your bed day after day? Don’t you wish you had someone different: younger, older, shorter, darker, or with a bigger cock?”

I shook my head and smiled.

“Well, I have seen his feet, so maybe not the last one,” he continued, and that made me laugh. I wasn’t going to comment on Oliver’s dick's size, but that was a fair assumption on his part, so to speak.

“But he isn’t the same person; I am not the same person. We are growing, together.”

Pierre scrunched his nose, as if I had just told him that there was a decomposed rat under the table.

“Yeah, okay, maybe. Anyway, I wanted to apologise properly for that night at the Angel. He convinced me it was the right thing to do, that he should tell you how things really stood.”

“You did it because you wanted to shag him.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, with a bright, guileless smile.

I could never stay angry at him, because when sex was on the menu, his brain ground to a halt.

“He asked me to move in with him.”

“And?”

“No way! What happens when I want to go to Subway on my own or maybe spend the night on the Heath? And he was too neat and tidy for me.”

“You’re a slob.”

“Look who’s talking. I bet Oliver even irons your shirts.”

When you thought he was your typical dumb and pretty boy, Pierre would always surprise you with his keen insights. I kept my mouth shut, but he knew he’d scored a point.

“What’s going on with Jack, where is he?”

Jack was my cousin Giacomo, LSE student, bespectacled ex-geek and now well on his way to becoming a roué, a real dissolute.

“He’s phoning that dread-locked guy to see whether he can score some pills.”

“What pills?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“What about that girl he was seeing?”

“The Japanese with the pigtails? Now he’s sleeping with her boyfriend, I think, or maybe I got it wrong. Can’t keep track.”

“He’s worse than you. When we were kids he used to spend his time in his room studying chess manuals and munching Rodeo chips.”

“London ruined him.”

We sniggered as we saw him approach.

There was something of me in Jack: he too was tall and lanky with thick eyebrows and dark hair, only his was straight and worn short, like a shiny helmet. He wore rimless glasses and his slanted grey eyes seemed magnified by the lenses. There was an oriental allure to him and it didn’t surprise me at all that he attracted boys and girls from those parts of the world.

“Gaz said he’s waiting for us at the car park,” he announced, as if we’d been sitting there only waiting for that information. He was paler than me, almost the colour of wax, with small pink lips like a virgin girl.

“I don’t like Gaz,” said Pierre, and that alarmed me a little, because Pierre rarely admitted openly that he disliked people.

“What car park?” I asked.

“The one in Brewer Street. He’ll be on level 3, where we had that party last year, where you got off with that Swedish guy.”

“He was Finnish.”

It seemed to have happened in another life. I couldn’t even remember what we’d done, not in any detail. When I tried to recall him, I could only see another body, another face.

“Whatever. Are you coming? He will have some hash too. Have you got any money on you?”

“Fifty quid,” I replied. Jack had always managed to get the truth out of me, even when we were kids. He was only one year older, but had always appeared strangely self-contained, as if the world could take him or leave him and he wouldn’t mind. He was either a Buddhist in the making or a potential serial killer. Or maybe he would discover the formula for breaking the stock market: I really couldn’t tell.

Oliver was fascinated by him, in the same way as a biologist is drawn to bacteria.

‘Jack the riddler’, he called him, which made my cousin smile, a feat which was as rare as Pierre’s abstinence.

“Okay, but only if we go straight away,” I replied. It was already eight, but not yet dark. I didn’t fancy the idea of being in that car park at night.

“I’ll just get some cash from the ATM,” he said, and left us to finish our cappuccinos and pastries.

 

“Are you sure about this?”

Pierre was puffing on his second cigarette in a row while we were climbing the stairs to the third level of the car park. The stench of urine combined with the exhaust fumes to create a lethal mixture that was eroding what little positivity I ever had regarding this assignation.

Jack was three steps ahead of us, his slim long legs clad in a pair of bright red jeans; he didn’t bother to slow down, but threw his reply at me with his usual indifference.

“Gaz is all right. You’ll like him.”

Why would I like him, I thought, but didn’t ask as I knew it would be pointless.

As he pushed the heavy iron door open, I felt a whiff of stale warm air on my face.

We emerged on to a deserted space which I half-remembered having been disseminated with second-hand furniture and cartons of wine and beer bottles. It was empty now except for a stack of cardboard boxes set against the peeling wall at the far end of the room. The windows had been boarded up and there was little natural night.

“He’s not here,” Pierre said, staying close to the door. A moment later, a tall stocky man with shoulder-length dreadlocks pushed the fire door open and made his entrance. He was as big as Oliver, but much heavier.

“Jack my lad,” he said, with a Latin American lilt to his voice. My cousin had told me that he was Brazilian and his name was Gabriel. “Pierre, you tart,” he said, slapping my friend’s shoulder with a bit too much enthusiasm. It made Pierre wince.

“And who would you be?” he said, circling me like a vulture. “Hmm, is this a present for me, Jack? Cute little thing, nice arse.”

“Leave him alone, he’s my cousin.”

Gaz smiled, but it wasn’t in the least reassuring; he had eyes as dark as plums which didn’t seem to have any depth.

“You have my pills? Three bags of type one and two of type five. And the hash,”

The business was done quickly and money exchanged hands.

Pierre and I were already walking away, when suddenly Gaz sidled up to me. He was so close I could smell the smoke in his breath and the filth in his hair.

“Hey cousin, where are you going? Jacky boy here tells me you are a music buff and I have tickets to the Glazer concert tomorrow night.”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if they had told me aliens had invaded the planet.

“But it’s been sold out since before it was even advertised.”

Gaz smiled in his strangely soulless manner.

“I have contacts.”

“I’d love to but I really can’t. Thanks anyway,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. Somehow, I knew he wouldn’t insist.

“Too bad,” he replied, and walked out the same way he’d come in.

 

“A drug dealer who loves Glazer: where did you find him?”

“He knows a girl I was sleeping with.”

“Not the Japanese one?”

Jack frowned as if he had no idea who I was talking about. We had left Pierre in a Soho bar and were walking towards the Leicester Square station. We were going to separate soon, as he was taking the Piccadilly Line.

“What are you doing with the pills?”

“Using them, testing my physical boundaries; I’m not dealing them, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“I’m more worried about the sort of people who want to meet in dodgy places than by you dealing drugs. I know you wouldn’t want the hassle.”

He shook his head.

“Why bother? I have all the money I need. How’s Oliver?”

“Great, thanks. It’s his birthday next week.”

He took out his wallet and gave me back my fifty pounds.

“When you smoke it, think of me,” he said. He squeezed my arm and walked to the blue line escalator.

 

I was still thinking of Gaz and his Glazer tickets when I came out of Waterloo station, and was so immersed in my reveries I nearly walked past our building.

Oliver was preparing dinner, something with smoked salmon, courgettes and limes, from what I could gather. I never asked, because he liked to surprise me.

When I kissed him, his lips tasted of sweet chilli. I licked them and felt him melt against me. Once I would have been gratified by this demonstration of the hold I had on him, but now I only wanted to make this permanent in a meaningful and binding way. Petri had promised he would help me in every way he could and I know I could count on his discretion. Anyway, I needed to finish my studies and decide what sort of career path I wanted to embark on. Over the summer, I would tell Oliver and ask him if he would wish to, accept to... even just thinking of the words made me shiver.

“You cold?” he said, rubbing my back. As he did that, something fell out of the pocket of my jacket.

It was a square piece of paper. He picked it up and looked at it. His face went blank, like it always did when he was angry or upset.

“Gabriel Costa. There’s his phone number and a message for you. _If you are on for Glazer tomorrow night, give me a buzz_. Who’s this?”

When had he put this in my pocket, I wondered, and remembered how close he’d been when he’d asked me out; like a magic trick, almost; legerdemain, indeed.

I was debating whether to tell the whole story or just mention he was a friend of Jack’s, but Oliver has misconstrued my indecision.

“You should go,” he said, turning away from me; he went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “I know how much you care about this concert and I...”

“No, I said no when he asked and I’m saying it now. He put this in my pocket and I didn’t even notice. That’s crazy, don’t you think?”

This time I should have kept my mouth shut.

He poured himself a large glass of wine and downed half of it.

“Yeah, he must have been really close to do it unnoticed.”

“He took me by surprise.”

“Did he? What else did he do?”

He drizzled olive oil on the courgettes and pretended he didn’t care one way or another about my answer.

“Oh you know, the usual: he slipped his hand inside my pants and touched me. Hmm,” I moaned, as I did the exact same thing to him. He resisted for about two seconds then grabbed me by the hair and shoved his tongue inside my mouth. Ten blissful minutes later, with Oliver’s taste still on my tongue, I embarked on a detailed description of my visit to Brewer Street.

“Is Jack insane? Please tell me you didn’t take any of his pills.”

“Just some hash. He paid for it; a present for your birthday, he said.”

I handed him the sealed plastic bag. He took it, inspected its contents, looked at me, and we both exploded with hysterical laughter.

 

“This salmon is delicious.”

“You’re welcome. I wish I had been able to get you tickets for Glazer.”

“I will queue for returns, if you want to come and stand with me outside the Wigmore Hall.”

“I will stand with you everywhere you want me to,” he said, slipping his bare foot underneath mine.

“You hate queuing.”

“I want to see this Gabriel punk.”

“He likes to be called Gaz and he’s vile.”

“He’s got great taste though.”

“Yes, well Glazer is an amazing performer.”

“I was talking about you, goose.”

He clicked his tongue and placed his other foot on top of mine, which was now sandwiched between his two giant extremities.

“Pierre said something about your feet today. You know what they say about big feet and-”

He chuckled.

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing, but I may have blushed. He dumped Tim because he’s still obsessed with you.”

“Well, he’s wasting his time.”

“Same as Gaz, and the rest of the world,” I said, putting my other foot on top of his to complete the ‘circle’.

“Yes,” he said, and it sounded prophetic.


	11. London, May 1987 – Friday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy 28th birthday, dear Oliver!
> 
> Be prepared to be hit by a tonne of fluff and smut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't watched the film/don't wish to be spoiler-ed, don't read the end notes.
> 
> Edit: I forgot to mention that their escapade inside the private garden is sort of lifted from The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, which is set in the period 1983/1987 (I know!). There's a BBC adaptation of it, with Dan Stevens and Hayley Atwell. If you have never read it/seen it, it's really, really worth it. The novel won the Booker Prize in the UK.

“Oliver, please, please.”

I was babbling, but he was killing me or perhaps I was already dead and going towards the light.

 

It had started at dinner, a lobster and champagne feast at Kettner’s, my treat to celebrate Oliver's birthday. The following day we were driving to Brighton to visit a couple of friends who’d invited us to their cottage for the late May bank holiday week-end. We had decided we’d leave at lunch-time, since it would give us plenty of time to recover from the night’s revels.  What I had not expected was that Oliver would let go so suddenly and completely. Maybe it was the hot weather, a throwback to our Italian summer, or the copious amounts of alcohol, but he behaved as if every one of his restraints had been severed and he could be free at last.

“What are you doing?” I smiled, as I felt his thumb on my lower lip.

The restaurant was heaving as usual and nobody was paying any attention to us.

“You have some sauce here,” he said, stroking the corner of my mouth. Locking eyes with me, he put his finger in his mouth and sucked it.

“Oldest trick in the book.”

I was trying to joke, but was already getting hard.

“They are always the best ones,” he replied, pouring champagne in both our glasses.

His face, neck and arms were slightly tanned already and his hair was blonder; the midnight blue shirt he had chosen was only making things worse for me: it was light and soft and despite being the right size, it gave the impression of clinging for dear life to the muscles of his chest and arms.

I fiddled with my portion of lobster and tried my best to calm down.

“I like your jeans, nice cut,” he went on, and put his hand on my thigh. It wouldn’t have been a dangerous area, if he’d had average-sized hands. As it was, the tips of his fingers were skimming the inside of my leg, at the very edge of my groin.

“Are you kidding me?” I protested, and he leaned closer as if to whisper in my ear; his hand now was cupping my crotch, mirroring my gesture on that July afternoon when we’d lain down on the grass. Thanks to the long table cloth, no one could see this manoeuvres, but I was flushed and very aroused.

Just as he had started, he stopped; the hand that had driven me crazy took mine and held it gently.

“You were brave, that day.”

“Just a foolish boy.”

“I have never possessed your sort of bravery.”

“You left your country and your family. What I did was nothing in comparison.”

He shook his head and brought my hand to his lips for a kiss.

“You taught me things about my body I didn’t even suspect.”

“What things?”

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, with evident irony.

“Later,” I echoed, and smiled.

 

“Where are you taking me?”

“There’s a private garden not far from here. It’s locked, but the fence is broken. It’s on the way to my gym.”

“Were you casing the joint, like a bank robber?”

He curled his arm around my waist and pulled me closer to his side.

“I’ve never made love in a public place.”

“Are you trying to get us arrested on your birthday?”

I wasn’t really arguing with him and he knew it. It was supremely erotic to imagine Oliver planning this, devising a way to have me in a public place.

“I could just hold you and kiss you. In fact, I could do it now.”

And so he did: he enveloped me in his arms and captured my mouth with his. His tongue teased, stroked, possessed mine until I was gasping for breath.

His hair was the way I liked it: tousled where my fingers had raked through it. He looked young, happy and ready to be ravished.

“Where’s that garden?” I asked.

“Over there,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my cheekbone.

 

He was right, of course: next to the secondary entrance, someone had torn a large hole in the metal fence; well, it was large enough for me, but Oliver was another matter.

“You’ll get stuck.”

“I never intended to try,” he replied and, after making sure no one was around, climbed over the fence, jumping off on the other side of it.

The garden was dark and deserted; many people had already left town for the bank holiday, and anyway it must have been locked at dusk.

The trees stood out against the starry night, black and velvety. We could hear the distant hum of traffic and, closer to us, the rustling sounds of nature.

I turned to look at him and felt too many things at once. Above all, I wanted to feel his body against mine.

“Come here,” he said and, having read my mind, he laid me down on a patch of springy grass still warm from the sunshine. The next moment, he pulled me on top of him, my head resting on his chest. His heartbeat was as fast as mine. I undid one more shirt button and kissed the bit of skin I had uncovered.

“I love this, Oliver,” I sighed, meaning I love you, which I was saving for later, for the seclusion of our bedroom.

“I never really believed I could be this happy,” he replied, playing with my curls.

“It was never on the cards for me, you know? I wanted to make enough money to live comfortably doing something I loved, but as for my personal life, I knew I would have to compromise. Whenever something threatened to overwhelm me, I always pulled away.”

“Fear and desire.”

“Yes.” He tugged softly at a lock of my hair. “And then one fine day I set my eyes on you and my entire life came undone. It was completely unexpected. I knew I liked men, but I always gave myself plausible reasons for liking them. With you it was different; I just wanted you, all of you. And the more I tried to suppress it, the worse it got. I liked everything about you, even the way you tried to hate me at first.”

“I never hated you.”

“You resented me.”

“For your ‘laters’ and your indifference.”

He stroked my face, my neck, then rolled me onto the grass and started unbuttoning my shirt.

“When I left, I really believed it would be for good, but when I got to New York, I couldn’t breathe for how much it hurt.”

“It was the same for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He was done with my shirt and his hands were stroking my naked skin, lighting fires along the way. He massaged my shoulders, the first part of me he’d ever touched to test the waters. I threw my head back and he attacked my neck, littering it with kisses and soft bites. All the while, I was trying to undress him, to get to his skin, but he was resisting me.

“Let me do this for you,” he said, as he unzipped my jeans and freed my erection. I barely had time to feel the fresh air on my cock when he brought his mouth to it and swallowed it down. He knew how much I loved this to be done to me, and I knew he adored it too. But I also understood that, like I had wanted so desperately to give him something on our first night together, now he wished to offer me his truth, his past and with it, his future.

I was so turned on, I came almost at once. He looked up at me, licking his lips.

“Your turn,” I said, and he let me bring him off with my hands. He held on to me and stared into my eyes; in the dark, he seemed even more imposing and at the same time more fragile, infinitely breakable. I sucked my fingers clean and went for his mouth.

“We taste of each other,” he whispered, and kissed me deeply, his chest pressed against mine.

“Happy birthday,” I said, when we came up for air.

“It really is.”

“Let’s go home; I haven’t given you my present yet.”

“Oh, so there’s more?”

“A proper present.”

“I liked the improper one.”

“And I like your private garden.”

We shared a smile and let the sweet balm of night draw us even closer.

                  

“What do you think?”

Oliver was caressing the book with slightly trembling fingers.

“It must have cost you a fortune,” he said, contemplating the navy blue suede hard cover and the gilt lettering with awe.

“Dad helped and the TLS gave me permission to use the material.”

The book contained the articles we had collaborated on and had both our names on the cover. There was a picture of us on the inside of the dust jacket: it had been taken by a friend of ours after a lecture Oliver had given at the Conway Hall. He was embracing me from behind and his chin was resting on my head. We were both smiling broadly and looking stupidly happy.

On the flyleaf, I’d had inscribed a beloved quotation by William Blake: _he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence._

He chuckled when he read it.

“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been given.”

“Better than Armance?”

“That was from you, but this is us, together. It’s... I have no words for it.”

He put the book down on the coffee table and stared at it. I did the same, mesmerised by the sight of our names printed in gold, one on top of the other.

“Let’s smoke some of my cousin’s present,” I suggested, and made to stand up when he pulled me down on his lap and kissed me breathless.

“Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

“I’ll make sure of that.”

I stroked his chin and along his jaw.

“You’re a terrible flirt,” I said, and he slapped my bottom.

 

The first joint had us in a fit of giggles, but half-way through the second, I was feeling ravenous and Oliver was in the same boat.

“There was a time when I thought I’d never see you without your bathing suit. I wanted it so much, you have no idea,” I said.

We were both down to our t-shirts and boxer briefs, and when I bent down to his crotch, his cock was already pushing out of the slit. I took the head in my mouth and felt him shiver and groan. I sucked him until he was fully erect with every intention of riding him, when he flipped me over so that my back hit the mattress.

He quickly stripped off then did the same to me. The reefers had left me pleasantly pliant and with an uncertain grasp of time. I don’t know how long it had passed before I found myself with my back against the headboard with Oliver on my lap, sliding up and down my dick. His chest and neck were glistening with sweat and I wanted very much to lick it off him. I couldn’t remember where my hands were only to realise they were clutching his arse and were reluctant to let it go.

“I want to lick you,” I moaned, and he tried to laugh but it came out as a deep groan. I stuck my tongue out and he sucked it into his mouth, which was as hot as his insides. His erection slapped me on the tummy and I wanted to lick that too.

Finally, the sight of his muscled shoulders became too much for me; I had to feel them flexing beneath my hands.

When I started touching, I couldn’t stop: there was so much of him and all of it mine. The moment I fisted his dick, he clamped down on me and it was then that I cried out:

“Oliver, please, please,” and thought my heart would jump out of my mouth.

He forced me to look into his eyes, which were nearly blackened by lust, and as he held my face in his hands, he whispered: “I’m so in love with you,” and I wanted to cry and laugh and disappear inside of him.

“Yes, yes, so much, so much,” I sobbed, and felt him come in my hand, so I let go too, because there was nothing I wanted more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for Elio's propensity for receiving blow-jobs: in the book, one of the first things he imagines is to come in Oliver's mouth. In the film, after their first night and during Elio's mini-crisis, Oliver tries to think of a way to resolve the issue. We see him looking at the unmade bed, probably recalling the night before. He then asks Elio to remove his trunks and starts going down on him, which works a treat. We can safely assume Oliver had remembered what Elio had liked best during their night together. If only more men were like Oliver.


	12. London, June 1987 - Friday and Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise visit and Elio gets shit-faced.
> 
> Thanks to you all for being all so very nice to me xxxx

I came out of the shower and was padding to the bedroom when I heard Oliver talking to someone. He was on the phone and I wouldn’t have paid this any mind had it not been for the fact that he was keeping his voice down. I moved closer and even though I couldn’t discern his words, I got the impression that it wasn’t a business call or a friendly one. I waited until he put the receiver down then entered the living room.

“Everything all right?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

He looked at me with unseeing eyes, evidently still reflecting about his recent conversation, then he let out a sigh and shook his head.

“It was Alice. She’s coming to London and would like to see us.”

Hearing that name was like being touched by the gauzy robes of a ghost: not real but somehow even more terrifying because of its lack of substance.

“She would like to see _you_.”

“Maybe she does, but she’ll come to the house and you will be here, won’t you?”

It wasn’t a question.

“When is she coming?”

“She’s already in the country, visiting some relatives in Oxford. I thought Saturday evening, but I told her I would have to confirm it with you.”

“You said she hated travelling.”

“She does. It’s the first ever time outside the States.”

“And she's come to England; what a coincidence.”

Oliver came up to me and brushed my still-wet hair away from my face.

“Nothing she might say or do will change anything.”

He towelled down my back and arms ostensibly to help me get dry, but it was also his way of connecting with me physically without demanding reciprocation.

“I know, I know. It’s just that she’ll be yet another person who’s known you longer and better than I have.”

When his hands reached my bottom, I backed into them to make him laugh.

“Nobody knows me like you do.”

I scooped out his Star of David and held it in the palm of my hand.

“What?” he asked, still smiling.

“I wish you’d been there during my childhood, that you’d always been present.”

“A touch problematic, don’t you think?” he joked.

“You’re spoiling my fantasy.”

“Your sick and twisted fantasy.”

Leaning closer, I put the Star in my mouth and suckled it, while staring him straight in the face. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t even blink, but put his lips to my mouth and let his tongue seek and find mine through the gap in the Star: it was a kiss tasting of precious metal and musk, of shared traditions and rituals, of promised lands and indissoluble bonds.

 

On the Friday before Alice’s visit, I decided that I needed to get drunk, so I joined Petri and a bunch of his Danish friends at a riverside bar near Tower Bridge. Around eleven, we were all sozzled, so that when Petri and I started talking about my personal problems the others couldn’t have listened in even if they’d wished to. Petri had the ability to talk sense even when he was plastered and I became even more candid and peculiarly paranoid.

“Why is she here?” he asked, throwing a packet of cigarettes in the direction of his bearded friend Søren, who was murdering Madonna’s True Blue. It did not silence him, but at least he moved to another table.

“To see us, apparently; probably wants to make sure I’m not holding Oliver hostage with my dubious charms.”

“I can understand the dubious, but not the charms.”

“Very funny,” I replied, blowing smoke in his face. He inhaled it avidly, so I got the message and offered him one of my Silk Cuts.

“You don’t have anything to worry about. Oliver is totally gone on you.”

“You think?”

“Don’t make me talk like a teenage girl, but yes, I _think_. Any idiot would _think:_ all his sidelong glances, when he thinks nobody’s watching; he looks at you like you’re the centre of the universe or something.”

I recalled Julian’s words about Oliver and Tim and snorted smoke out of my nose.

“It’s a thing he does; he did it with his previous boyfriend too or so I have been told.”

“Wait, are you having doubts about Oliver? Because that’s insane even for your usual standards of insanity.”

“No, no, no doubts, none, nada, non...”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Babies,” I declared, mournfully.

“Wait, what? Does Oliver have kids?”

“No and that’s the problem: I can’t have babies.”

“Have you told him?”

I kicked him in the shin, but he wouldn’t stop laughing.

“I’m trying to be serious.”

“Try harder, man. I mean, he can’t either, can he? Why should you be the one to worry about it? Unless it’s something to do with your role-playing in bed, in which case I don’t want to know.”

“Idiot. He’s the one who left a woman to be with me.”

“You didn’t point a gun to his head.”

“What if he regrets it in the future?”

“What if you get hit by a bus on the Blackfriars Bridge?”

“You’re not being very helpful.”

“Listen, you don’t know what’s going to happen; you could even be able to adopt one day. You may not even be together any more.”

I glared at him and he rolled his eyes.

“Point is he’s with you because he wants to be. And believe me, he _really_ wants. Hell, if he wanted any harder, he’d been shagging you in public.”

He grimaced at the image he’d just conjured up then looked at me and his eyes widened.

“He did, didn’t he? No, don’t tell me. At least if they arrest you, I can plead ignorance.”

“Oliver was very careful,” I said, and he stuck his fingers in his ears.

I was about to invent something utterly outrageous to shock him when Søren  jumped on our table, singing a punk rendition of La Isla Bonita. I got up and staggered to the bar.

 

When I got home, Oliver was already in bed, but I knew that he wasn’t sleeping even if the lights were off.

I decided to not disturb him and sleep on the sofa, but when I lay down on it, it started rocking, so I let myself roll on to the floor. It didn’t hurt, but my stomach had been upset by the motion. I didn’t want to be sick on the carpet, so I hummed a song to distract myself.

“I can hear you, but I can’t see you,” said Oliver’s faraway voice.

“I hate Like a Virgin.”

“Stop singing it then. Why are you not in bed with me?”

“The bed is too horizontal.”

I felt his hands on my face; they smelled of soap and sleep.

“If I move you, are you going to be sick?”

“Maybe I could sing another song.”

“Or I could get you a glass of water.”

“What do you think of Heart of Glass? Too high perhaps?”

“Yes, way too high,” he replied.

“Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver,” I sang and he laughed; I couldn’t see him clearly, but he sounded fond.

“All right then,” he said and left the room. I closed my eyes thinking he’d gone back to bed, but soon I felt a gust of air and a muffled noise. He laid the duvet down on the carpet and placed our pillows on top of it.

“I’m going to be here, whenever you feel like moving,” he said, and as I forced my eyes open, caught sight of his amused smile. Very slowly and crab-like, I joined him on our make-shift bed.  

“You stink like a brewery,” he said.

“I could go and,”

“No, you stay right where you are. Wake me if you feel that you’re going to be sick.”

He turned to the side to face me and touched my cheek.

“I don’t remember the words to Heart of Glass,” I replied, trying to grab his fingers with my lips.

“They’ll come to you,” he chuckled, but I was already falling asleep.

 

When the bell rang on that Saturday evening, I felt the sudden need to smooth out all of my real and imaginary creases and present a façade of pristine perfection. Naturally, since I was nursing my hangover and could still hear Madonna’s entire discography ringing inside my head, I was miles away from that imaginary ideal.

Oliver was treating the visit as if it wasn’t that big a deal to him: he had not prepared anything fancy to eat and he was dressed casually in jeans and a cotton shirt.

Before he went to open the door, he took my hand and kissed it.

I heard them greet each other and then she was finally in front of me.

Alice.

 

The last thing I could have predicted was that I would like her, but I did, and almost immediately.

For some reason, I had imagined her to be a feminine version of me: a svelte brunette with hazel eyes, beset by nervous timidity and turned sarcastic by jealousy.

Instead, I found myself face to face with a curvy blonde with clear blue eyes and an endearing oblique smile. In a way, she could have been Oliver’s sister: their colouring was similar and even though she wasn’t freakishly tall, she was of above average height. Her face reminded me of Botticelli’s Madonna of The Book, but the resemblance ended as soon as she opened her mouth.

“You are not at all like I imagined,” she said, as she kissed me on both cheeks.

“What did you imagine?”

“Well, Holden said you were a scrawny boy with long hair; he never mentioned you were gorgeous. He is, isn’t he?” she quipped, seeking confirmation from Oliver, who was preparing the drinks and didn’t know what to reply.

“I thought you’d look a bit like me,” I said.

She laughed and her nose crinkled, which made her look like a child. The idea of Oliver having sex with this woman seemed almost grotesque. And the notion that she could still be pining for him appeared even more absurd.

I gazed at the two of them and realised Oliver was as dumbstruck as I was.

He handed her a glass of white wine and she took a large sip, sighing after she’d swallowed it down.

“God, I needed it! Aren’t you drinking? Don’t tell me you are one of those.”

“I’m still recovering from last night. I was so drunk I ended up sleeping on the floor.”

“The floor of the bar?”

“No, I did manage to get home.”

“I’ve never been really drunk. Is it true that you don’t remember anything the day after?”

“I remember singing Like a Virgin.”

“I bet you wish you’d forgotten that.”

Oliver had the same expression on his face as when he’d tried to figure out what was wrong with me after our first night: he was lost at sea.

“How are your parents?” he enquired, trying to regain a foothold in the conversation.

“They are not very happy with me at the moment. Thankfully they have Sarah – that’s my sister – to rely upon, since I am no longer dependable.”

“Why, what have you done?” I asked, genuinely curious to find out.

“I have dumped Aaron and want to be on my own for a while. When Holden came back and told me about you two, I was really depressed at first, but then I thought, what the hell,” she laughed again and Oliver couldn’t suppress a smile. I felt that perhaps I was still in that bar with Petri and this was only a hallucination.

“First thing, I thought, is to get on a plane and see the world a bit.”

“And how are you finding it so far?”

“The plumbing is terrible and the trains are ancient, but the pubs are my new favourite thing. Why don’t we go out instead of dining in? It’s such a lovely day,” she said, and so we put the chicken salad in the fridge and went in search of the perfect pub.


	13. London, June 1987 - Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by Mystery of Love.
> 
> What a marvellous song...

Alice had left for Dover, but she had promised to talk to Oliver’s mother and at the very least try and convince her that she wasn’t holding any grudges and was very happy for us.

“I doubt she’ll listen to me though. I have lost my mind too, according to her. But I will do my best,” she’d said, before boarding the train at Victoria station.

Oliver had kissed her on the cheeks, while I hugged her tight, loving the smell of vanilla in her hair that so reminded me of my mother.

He had not yet adjusted to her sudden change, I thought, which is why he behaved so oddly around her.

“Do you think you’d have stayed with her, had she been like that from day one?” I asked, while we prepared for bed that night.

He’d finished cleaning his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. The heat-wave persisted and we had no air conditioning, like most houses in London. I didn’t mind the oppressive heat and the stickiness of our bodies: I loved summer weather and its sensual restlessness.

He turned to look at me, the very picture of astonishment.

“You believe I’m having second thoughts?” he laughed. “You’re on the wrong track, my friend.”

I came up behind him and caressed down his naked back, bringing my lips to his spine, and licking the salt that had gathered in its furrows.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s just like you not to know,” he joked, reaching back to touch me.

“I have known her for so long that she’s almost like a relative to me. I can’t even remember what it was like to desire her.”

He shivered slightly, and I rested my hands on his hips, anchoring him to the present.

“And it scares me that I can’t, and also that I didn’t see the person who was hiding beneath my old friend.”

I had been distracted by the deliciousness of his sun-drenched shoulder-blades, but his words sounded an alarm bell.

“It’s nobody’s fault. Things change, people change.”

“But I didn’t see it coming, like I did not see that you didn’t want to be with me in San Francisco.”

He turned around and it took me a moment to recapture the thread of our conversation: he was still wet and there were freckles on the bridge of his nose which had not been there before. I wanted to look at them closely and kiss them one by one.

Naturally, he mistook my silence for a reluctance to speak of the past.

He sighed “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“What? No, no, it’s not that I... you have freckles on your nose.”

“Yeah, I should be more careful and wear sunscreen.”

“They are pretty.”

“Look who’s talking,” he bent down and kissed me on the lips.

“We should go to bed,” I whispered.

“The bed’s not too horizontal for you tonight?”

I bit his lower lip.

“This is for mocking me.”

“Remember the lyrics of Heart of Glass now?”

I went for his tongue now, but he was giggling and after a while I was too.

 

We somehow made it to our room and collapsed on the bed, still laughing.

“You sing too when you’re drunk. Last time you were belting out Waterloo.”

“We were on the Waterloo Bridge.”

I straddled his torso and tickled his sides; he wriggled and tried to capture my hands.

“So what, maybe I felt like a virgin.”

“Hmm, did you?”

At last he succeeded and had my wrists in his steely grasp, which he managed to keep loose enough to avoid hurting me.

“Maybe.”

He tried to pull me down, but I resisted, so he let go of one of my hands and wrapped his fingers around the back of my neck.

“Kiss me.”

His voice was hoarse and even though he was still smiling, his eyes had darkened.

“Maybe,” I repeated, but did not allow him to touch my lips.

“Please,” he said, staring at my mouth; I knew that we were shamming and yet it felt as electric as if I was going to be his lover for the first time.

I bent down to whisper in his ear:

“You have to be very gentle.”

He didn’t reply but I felt his heart thudding and it sent a jolt of arousal directly to my groin; I was hard already and the evidence of my arousal was pressing against Oliver’s tense abdominal muscles.

“Okay,” he replied, and as delicately as he could, he manoeuvred me so that I was on my back with my head on the pillow while he was next to me propped up on one elbow, gazing down into my face.

“Close your eyes,” he said, and when I did, he kissed my eyelids, all the while caressing my hair.

His lips travelled down to my cheekbones then to my jaw, soft as spring raindrops.

“You can kiss my mouth, if you want,” I said, and felt his hand move to my throat; his thumb was drawing circles on it; it was maddeningly slow and yet insistent, almost hypnotic. I kept my eyes shut, wanting Oliver to surprise and overwhelm me.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, and with the tip of his tongue he licked along my lower lip, softly at first then exerting an increasing pressure.

I couldn’t resist him, so I opened my mouth, inviting him in.

His tongue caressed mine with feather-light touches, dancing away as soon I tried to stroke it more firmly.

At one point I must have groaned in exasperation because I felt him smile, but still he kept the kiss almost chaste, his hand never straying below my collarbones.

The warmth of the room, the waves of heat emanating from both our bodies increased the sensuality of the moment. I felt as ripe and ready to be taken as that peach I had violated; another instant and I would have sobbed with frustration. Instead, I took Oliver’s hand and put it between my legs. It was so good it made me hiss and arch my back.

“Naughty virgin,” he chuckled, but the game was over because I needed him and he wanted me as badly.

I climbed on top of him, pinned him to the mattress and slipped my tongue in his mouth, and licked everywhere, going as deep as I could, wishing I could lap at his heart and his soul.

How long we stayed like that I can’t say, but I must have let go of his hands because they were all over my body, as hungry as our mouths.

“I worship you, Elio,” he said then, his voice breaking a little, and there was too much feeling between us; a surfeit of love, passion and tenderness was melding our bodies into one being; lovemaking and orgasms could never go that far or cut that deep.

I moved inside his embrace so that my head rested above his heart and he stroked my hair, gently, until we both fell asleep, tired but serene and sated.

 

It didn't occur to me then that Oliver would still think about Alice’s transformation, not in relation to her but to me, to us.

It was evident to those who knew us - even to the more casual acquaintances - that our bond was strong and made to last. As it’s frequently the case, we were the ones who doubted; we did so irrationally, subconsciously and out of preternatural fear. Once bitten twice shy, so the saying goes, and we’d both been hurt by the other’s rejection. When we were making love, laughing or just being together, the fear dissipated, but when we were on our own, it was free to strike again. And because there was no logical reason to it, it did take unpredictable shapes, protean and elusive in equal measure.

I would listen to him when he talked about his friends at the gym and I’d remember Julian’s words, and as certain as I was that nothing went on in there, I couldn’t chase the uneasiness those images had elicited. There would always be a pretty young man who would be more attractive than me, wittier, and who somehow owned the key which would unlock Oliver’s heart and steal it away from me.

Had I told him this, he would have reassured me and I would have believed him because I knew it was true. And yet the fear remained.

In his case, the fear had little to do with the people I met and more to do with my youth and what he saw as my changeability.

When he’d told me of his misgivings at not having noticed Alice’s potential for change, I had not realised how much it bothered him. He prided himself on sussing people out, on finding out what made them act the way they did and yet he had taken his own fiancée for granted; that struck him as impossible, so the only conclusion was that anything could happen and if that was the case, I could wake up one day, look at him and decide that I’d had enough and it was time for someone new.

How frail our mutual resolve to commit to one another seemed in comparison to these obstacles, which were not clad in the nobility of tragedy; they were grubby little things: the fatality of a chance encounter, the boredom of the daily grind, the ravages of time.

Our folie à deux was kept under the wraps of domesticity, but it was like a feral beast ready to pounce once the tranquilliser dart had worn off.


	14. London, June 1987 - Mid June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the angst.
> 
> This chapter was inspired by "Love is a Stranger" by Eurythmics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ten Bells pub was still named The Jack the Ripper in 1987.

Roland Barthes in his A Lover’s Discourse speaks of the amorous subject as an écorché, a flayed creature, a mass of irritable substance with no skin except for caresses.

This is an accurate description of my state of being during that short period in mid-June.

After Alice’s departure, we’d had a very busy week or so, and my mood had not been improved by a spell of miserable weather with temperatures and humidity worthy of autumn.

At last blue skies and sunshine made a comeback and to celebrate I decided to surprise Oliver and take him out for lunch. I went to the Birkbeck and since I couldn’t find him there I tried his gym: no trace of him there either.

When I spoke to him about it that evening, he explained he had been marking some papers in the University library: it was a perfectly plausible explanation and I thought nothing more of it.

He was the same affectionate, caring Oliver; he was less passionate in bed, but I told myself that I shouldn’t read anything into it; after all, he had several deadlines to meet and he had every right to be tired. And I couldn’t accuse him of being cold or distant, because he was kissing and hugging me even more than usual; I concluded that it was a phase, like there exist in every relationship, of intimacy being translated into closeness rather than sex.

I tried to be okay with it, but deep down I felt rejected, as if every doubt I’d ever entertained was becoming certainty: I was still a boy and he was a man, that's what I always concluded, and perhaps there were still things I could not provide. 

 

My rationalisation of his behaviour collapsed when two things happened.

One afternoon, I was looking for a pencil sharpener and couldn’t find mine, so I went to his desk and opened the top drawer, where he usually kept his stationery.

Unlike me, he was neat and tidy, but I couldn’t find what I searching for; what I did see was a stack of receipts, the top one being for a restaurant in the Spitalfields market area. We never went there together because it reminded me too much of that awful day in December when I had broken down crying in front of him. When I checked the date, I knew already that it would be the day when I had tried to take him out for lunch and he’d been nowhere to be found. Why would he lie, I wondered, feeling as if a black hole had just opened at my feet and I were slowly sinking into its quicksand.

The second and final piece of evidence had come the following morning courtesy of Jack who, at the time, was deep into his obsession about the real identity of Jack the Ripper, and was therefore frequently to be found in the Whitechapel area or in the eponymous pub.

He was telling me about a secret passage located in the crypt of a church, when he added:

“Oh, by the way, I saw Oliver; at least I think it was him; he was with a guy, sitting outside a restaurant or it could have been a cafeteria.”

“When was it?”

“Three days ago.”

“What did the guy look like?”

“I don’t know; he was a man, that’s all I can tell you. I was with Akiko and we were late for an appointment with a Japanese guide.”

Even though I was dying a little and my heart was like a lead weight inside my chest, I had to ask:

“Why were you meeting a Japanese guide?”

Jack stared at me as if I had just sprouted a second head.

“She knows everything about the Ripper’s victims. She wrote a book on the subject.”

I wanted to ask him what pills he was taking and if he was still testing his ‘physical boundaries’, but I needed to be on my own and think things through.

 

Talk to Oliver, that’s what I proposed to do that evening.

I spent the rest of the day in a distracted state, trying to concentrate on my studies and live in the moment when all I wanted was to be at home, asking why I was being lied to by the person I loved and wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

When I got off the bus at Waterloo, I already had the entire speech ready in my head and was about to blurt it out when I saw Oliver’s face, and my mind went blank.

He was sitting on the sofa and facing the door, clearly waiting for my arrival; a bottle of white wine and two glasses was set on the coffee table, but there was nothing celebratory in his expression.

“What’s happened? Is your mother all right?”

I went up to him and bent down to kiss him on the cheek; underneath his tan, he was ashen.

“Yes, it’s nothing to do with our families, but you better sit down.”

I complied, trembling like a twig caught in the wind. He took my hands and held them between his.

“That day you came to invite me out for lunch, I wasn’t marking papers like I told you.”

“You went out for lunch near Whitechapel, I know. Jack saw you and said you were with a man.”

“Yeah, I thought it was him.”

“And that’s why you are telling me, isn’t it? Because you know you’ve been found out.”

As soon as I said that, I knew it wasn’t the truth. Oliver brought my hands to his lips and kissed each finger.

“Tim was worried about his health. He called me to discuss it...when I saw him that day, he said he'd gone to the clinic for testing. He was afraid he’d be positive. Today he told me he was okay. He showed me the blood test results.”

It took me half a minute to take in the meaning of what he’d just said.

“What, why would he tell you, why would he get in touch with you?”

Why would this affect us, I wanted to say, but it would have sounded heartless.

“He lied to me. When he told me he’d been tested when we were together. He lied. He hates hospitals and he was certain he’d be okay because he never took unnecessary risks.”

“You always used protection with him... you said.”

“Yes, I did, always. But you can never be 100% sure, not even with protection. I could have infected you.”

He was terribly angry, that’s what had turned his face into a chalk-like mask.

As for me, I didn’t know what to think or feel: I was écorché, my skin had been peeled away and what remained was a tangle of frayed nerves and a bruised heart.

I freed my hands from his clasp and poured wine into one glass; I drank most of it and it made my eyes water.

“Are you sure that he told you the truth?”

“I saw the test results; I know what they look like.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. Did he really suspect he had something or was it just an excuse to see you?”

Oliver shook his head.

“And invent something that would make me lose all the trust and respect I had for him?”

“Maybe he thought you hate was better than your indifference or perhaps he just wanted to spend some time with you. When did he get in touch?”

Tim had contacted him at work and Oliver had accepted to meet him. It was then that he’d started to act peculiar and now I knew why. He wanted to protect me, the bitter irony of it almost made me laugh: protect me from a deadly contagion by not trusting me enough to tell me the truth.

He didn’t want to scare me needlessly, he added, and I’m quite certain that I smiled; the skin stretched and was as painful as a gash, but he returned the smile; he didn’t see that it was a grimace painted on one of those white masks of Japanese theatre or was it the Italian commedia dell’arte? I must have got distracted pondering that dilemma, because he had the temerity to ask me if I was okay. It reminded me of our first night. “Me okay,” I had replied even though I had not been really sure.

Suddenly, I was so flooded with rage I feared I would choke on it.

“That’s why you didn’t want to have sex with me.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“Then it’s business as usual, for you.”

He tried to touch me, but I flinched; when he tried again, I moved to the other end of the sofa.

“I wanted to tell you, but the idea of making you suffer...”

“I’m not a child and I don’t want to be treated like one.”

“We’ve put the past behind us and I didn’t want to,” he started and that made me even more livid.

“You didn’t, _you_ , YOU. What about what I thought? And as for the past, it’s not bloody done with us, is it?”

I couldn’t stay in the flat, not without doing some damage.

Oliver tried to stop me, but I didn’t care.

 

When I returned to the flat it was past midnight and Oliver was smoking in bed. He rarely did that and almost never on his own. The ashtray was full and the air was dense with smoke.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said, grabbing my pillow and a spare duvet.

“I’m sorry, Elio. I didn’t want to... I’m so sorry and you are right, I should have told you as soon as Tim got in touch.”

“Yes, you should have.”

He had dark shadows under his eyes and looked gaunt. I knew how much he hated sleeping without me and I intended to make him suffer.

“Come to bed. I’ll take the sofa.”

“Don’t you dare play the martyr.”

Oliver opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it. Good idea.

I opened the drawer to get my sleeping pills; I didn’t even try to be subtle about it.

Let him worry, let him stew in his guilt and rot in it. God, was I angry.

I swallowed two pills with a glass of wine and was out in no time.

 

I spent the following night at Petri’s, who must have been astonished at the turn of events, but said nothing. I had told him already of my intention of moving to Denmark in the future and he’d already proposed to give me language lessons since he needed the money.

“Is Oliver okay?” was all he asked and I nodded in reply.

The second night after our fight, I had to go home to get some of my things. I was prepared for another fight or least a heated discussion, but the flat was empty and I could tell that our bed hadn’t been slept in. The sheets had been changed and Oliver’s slippers were missing; when I entered the bathroom I saw that his toothbrush had also disappeared.

And just like that, the reality of a separation tore at my guts and made me heave. For the first time in many months, I was sick and he wasn’t by my side, holding my head or massaging my feet; comforting me and preparing my hot camomile and lemon. I let the tears flow then cleaned up, picked at some tuna salad I found in the fridge and took a bottle of vodka to bed; when I passed out I was sobbing again, but at least I had refrained from smoking and maybe setting the place on fire.

“Elio.”

I thought I was dreaming, but a hand touched my forehead, fingers I knew so well.

“I can’t do this,” Oliver’s voice said, but it sounded wrong, too strained and hoarse to be his. I was afraid of looking at him, afraid of his next words, afraid he would confess something terrible: that he’d cheated on me, that he’d gone back to Tim.    

Was I trying to stretch him like a rubber band, waiting for him to snap?

“What can’t you do?”

“Being afraid all the time,” he murmured.

I felt the mattress dip, next to my legs; he must have sat there, but I didn’t have the courage to open my eyes.

“You want to leave me,” I said.

“No, you want to leave me. Or at least, part of you does. This time I won’t let you go, Elio. I won’t stand aside and pretend everything is fine.”

“I was right to be upset with you.”

“Yes and I am sorry, but you shouldn’t have left. I didn’t even know where you were. You have no idea what it does to me, being here, in our bed without you.”

He had treated me like a child, because I was a child. Not all the time, but perhaps when it mattered most that I shouldn’t be one.

I did look at him now and saw that he was exhausted. My heart was as sore as a limb which had been asleep for too long.

“Come here,” I said, and opened my arms. He fell into them, into me, and I held him as he touched me everywhere, almost to make sure that I was still intact.

“Tell me about the bed thing.”

He was taken aback for a moment, intent as he was in kissing my neck inch by inch.

“The last night we spent together in Rome, I woke up at dawn while you were still sleeping. I stood at the window thinking it was the last time we’d be in the same bed and next time you’d share it with someone, it would not be me.”

I felt him shiver and held him even tighter.

“When you said you wanted to keep sleeping with me, you meant actual sleep.”

“Well, not only that,” he chuckled. “You really believed I didn’t want you any more?”

“What would you have thought if I’d behaved the same way?”

Oliver held my face in his hands and stared into my eyes.

“No more second-guessing, no more doubts, no more silences and half-truths.”

I nodded.

“There is no one else, because there can be no one else. Do you understand?”

Again, I nodded.

The fear had started to dissolve and with it what nerve I had left. My muscles had been tense for too long, so I had started to tremble all over.

“No more,” he said, and kissed me softly on the lips.

We spent a long time caressing and kissing, gently, only to reconnect with each other.

On the verge of sleep, I remembered to ask:

“Where were you last night?”

He mentioned the friends who’d invited us to Brighton for the bank holiday. I told him where I had been and he smiled. He liked and trusted Petri above all my other friends.

“Sleep now,” he said and, blissfully, we did.

 

I woke up at noon, but Oliver was still asleep.

It was Saturday and we didn’t have to be anywhere in particular.

At some point, he had removed his undergarments and kicked the covers away, so I was lying next to my very naked, slightly unkempt boyfriend. I licked the dip of his collarbone and found it deliciously salty.

“What are you doing?” he muttered, eyes still shut.

“Checking.”

“What?”

“If you still taste the same.”

“And?”

“I’m not sure yet. Have to conduct a more thorough investigation.”

“Maybe I want to do the same,” he said, and before I could reply, he rolled on top of me and pressed his lips to mine.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, as if we were starting again from scratch, and perhaps, in a way, we were.

I nodded and he slipped his tongue inside my mouth. We had already shared thousands of kisses and yet every one of them started a fire which could only be partially quenched.

We kept at it until we were breathless, dizzy and very aroused.

“And I thought I wouldn’t be able to make you hard again.”

I was palming his erection and he circled his hips and groaned.

“I get horny just thinking of unbuttoning your swimsuit.”

“You have a thing for my swimsuit.”

“I have a _thing_ for you.”

He pushed into my hand, and we both laughed, but it ended in another kiss, even more wet and desperate than the ones which had preceded it.

“I need to be in you,” Oliver gasped, and my response was to move down his body and take his cock in my mouth. In that position, he could easily put as many fingers as he wanted inside me. When he first breached me, the sheer ecstasy of it nearly undid me, and he was in a similar predicament, so we did not indulge more than was strictly necessary.

 

I have strange recollections of our lovemaking of that morning, almost as if I had been high on drugs or lost in the labyrinths of a dream.

Oliver was on top of me, driving into me, thrusting so hard the entire world seemed to shake and tilt, caught in the midst of a hurricane.

I was screaming and begging and sobbing, and he was desperately trying to fit his entire body into mine. One thing I will never forget is the look in his eyes: blissful and reverent at once, as if he couldn’t quite believe the extent of the pleasure he was giving me.

And pleasure it was, but of a kind that didn’t have much in common with anything I’d ever felt in bed with other people: I was Elio but I was also Oliver, and thus it would always be, I realised, half-deliriously.

 


	15. London, June/July 1987

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end has come.  
> Thanks so much to all of you for reading and commenting on this story. You have been amazing!!!!
> 
> I am thinking of writing about Elio and Oliver's summer from Oliver's POV. I will probably start soon because I can't get enough of the boys ha ha.

“I had the weirdest dream last night. I was arguing with David Hockney, but I couldn’t remember his name.”

“What were you arguing about?” Oliver asked, as he sipped his coffee.

“I don’t know, because I was trying to remember his name. He seemed very upset though.”

“Probably because you’d forgotten who he was.”

“I didn’t. I knew it was him.”

“What’s in a name anyway? You’d still be Elio even if I called you sunshine.”

I nudged his foot with mine.

“I thought you’d forgotten that.”

“I remember everything about you.”

It reminded me of that day at the Brunswick Centre, when I had said the same thing to him and he’d replied that maybe it was time to let the past go. It had felt like dying, as if the world had suddenly become a cold place, all its warmth gone forever, never to return again.

He took my hand and kissed it.

“I’ll never want to forget,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me _the_ question. Maybe he’d guessed my plans or at least part of them. Petri wouldn’t spill the beans, of that I was certain.

The last few days had been like a sort of honeymoon: we’d been touching and kissing all the time, we couldn’t get enough of each other.

I felt closer to him that ever and he was having a hard time dealing with the demands of his job, which just before the summer vacations was horrendously busy.

Two nights ago, he’d had to attend an evening event which was strictly for academics, no plus ones allowed. He’d returned just after midnight and I’d heard him enter the bathroom, where I guessed he would take a quick shower before coming to bed.

He’d entered the room barefoot and wearing only a towel which he’d discarded before joining me in bed.

I was wide awake, but pretended to be half-asleep and rolled over and into his arms.

“You’re still wet,” I mumbled, and faked a yawn.

“Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s good. It’s very hot in here.”

He caressed my back and I licked the droplets of water at the base of his throat.

“Are you tired?” I asked.

“I thought I was.”

His hand was cupping my ass and I pushed into it, wanting him to touch me more intimately. When he finally did, he emitted a sound between a gasp and a moan.

“I wanted to be ready for you,” I whispered in his ear. “But if you’re too tired...”

He didn’t even let me finish and was all over me, his tongue so insistent in my mouth I couldn’t do anything but let him take charge.

“You’re perfect,” he said, as he smeared lube on his cock. I tried to help, but he shook his head. “Let me,” he said, and manhandled me so that my legs were wrapped around his torso.

“Fuck me, Elio,” I murmured and felt his hips jerk.

“Oliver, Oliver, Oliver” he whispered, and slipped inside me with a single thrust.

In the semi-darkness, I could hardly see his face, but I knew that he was smiling at the nonsense coming out of my mouth as he ploughed into me like a sledgehammer.

I grabbed hold of the headboard and he wrapped his hand around my throat, pressing down on it with his thumb. He bent over to bring his mouth to my chest and his next thrust hit my sweet spot; it was so intense and unexpected it made me scream. He grew bigger inside me and thrust even more violently, until it was like falling into a river of lava. The next thing I remember, we were entwined, sweating and breathless, and he was still inside me.

“Have I come?” I asked and he laughed into my neck.

“You were like a garden hose,” he replied.

“We should go to sleep. You must be exhausted.”

“Only a week to go and then we’ll have sunshine and apricot juice.”

“I already have apricot juice.”

I wiggled my bottom.

“This is even more sick and twisted than usual,” he chuckled.

“As long as it makes you happy.”

“It makes me very happy.”

You make me happy too, Oliver.

 

Two days before our departure, I was at King’s when I was called out to reception to answer an urgent phone call.

It was the Chelsea and Westminster hospital letting me know that the evening before Jack had collapsed and was now being treated for opiates overdose. I was his emergency contact and for some reason he’d given them my university’s number.

“How is he?” I asked the nurse, but she wouldn’t tell me anything apart from his diagnosis and which ward and room he was in.

I terminated the call and placed another one at the Birkbeck, leaving a short message for Oliver.

I took the Piccadilly Line to Earls Court and walked from there, all the while pondering why I wasn’t more scared about my cousin’s predicament. Jack had always been such an elusive presence I had almost considered him super-human, part boy and part sophisticated machinery.

They had put him in a single room on the third floor; it was at the back of the building and had a view over the car-park.

Sitting by his side was a Japanese boy who looked about twelve, dressed in neon colours and with vinyl platform shoes.

“I’m Akiko,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it vigorously. “I told him three pills were too many but he didn’t listen.”

“Yeah, he never does.”

Akiko nodded miserably, which made him seem even more like a kid. His eyes were red rimmed, I realised, possibly from lack of sleep, but maybe also from crying.

“They didn’t tell me anything,” he added.

Of course they wouldn’t, I thought bitterly. He’s only his boyfriend, so to them he doesn’t matter.

“I spoke to the doctor just now. He said Jack should be fine, provided he undergoes a course of rehabilitation.”

Akiko was frowning.

“He will be okay, but no more pills.”

His expression cleared and he nodded a few times.

“No pills, yes, I told him.”

“If you want to go get some coffee and something to eat, I will sit here with him.”

“Have to go work, can’t take the day off because alone in the shop. Will come back tonight.”

“Sure, I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, and before leaving he placed a kiss on Jack’s waxen lips.

Since there wasn’t much I could do, I popped down to the grocery shop on the ground floor and purchased some orange juice and a sandwich. I had some textbooks with me, so I spent the next couple of hours studying and snacking.

It was lunchtime when I heard someone approach which I assumed was the food trolley, but was in fact Oliver.

He flung the door open and stopped short when he saw Jack in the hospital bed.

“Oh god, I’m going to kill Gillian,” he said, a bit breathless. “She said you’d called from the hospital and that you were in this ward. Of course, no one knew about you at reception and they didn’t want to tell me who was in this room. What’s happened to Jack, is he okay?”

“Sit down, drink some juice,” I said, but he only hugged me, so I did the same, until his heartbeat went back to normal.

I explained what had happened and told him about Akiko, how he’d been snubbed by the hospital's personnel.

“It’s inhuman to treat people like that.”

“It’s a privacy thing, apparently.”

Oliver snorted.

“Our case is different. You are my emergency contact, but in Jack’s case, well, he sleeps around a lot,” I said. “He can’t have Akiko’s down as his contact if he’s going to be replaced by somebody else in a week’s time.”

Obviously, Jack chose that precise moment to wake up.

“Stop talking about me behind my back,” he mumbled.

“Our boy Jack,” Oliver said, smiling at my cousin’s confused expression.

“What’s happened, where am I?”

I told him, while Oliver went to fetch a nurse.

“You better stop the pills. Pot’s fine, once in a while, but,”

“Yeah, that was the last batch anyway. Akiko doesn’t trust Gaz. He says he’s a creep.”

“That’s because he IS a creep.”

“He’s interesting,” he said, and yawned; when he tried to cover his mouth with his hand, he realised he couldn’t because of the IVs. He seemed fascinated by them, and I wondered why the nurse was taking so long. Knowing Jack, he would soon start asking me specific questions to which I wouldn’t know the answers.

“Akiko said he would come back tonight. He seems nice.”

“Yes, I’m learning Japanese.”

“And he’s teaching you?”

“No, of course not,” he replied, astounded that I could have made such a silly assumption.

Thankfully, Oliver returned with the doctor and we were asked to leave the room.

 

“I think he may be serious about Akiko,” I told Oliver that night, while we were packing our suitcases. “He’s learning Japanese and they have been together for a while now. And he’s giving up the pills because Akiko doesn’t like Gaz.”

“I already like this guy,” he replied, as he folded the first of his many blue shirts.

“Would you learn a language for the person you love?”

“You know the answer.”

“You don’t speak French.”

“Would you like me to learn?”

“Maybe.”

He placed the folded shirt inside the suitcase and came up to me.

“What’s going on?” he asked, wrapping his arms around me.

“Nothing, just thinking about the future; things we might do together, places we might visit.”

“Do you mind staying in Italy for the entire summer holidays?”

“No, no, I can’t wait to pretend to dislike you all over again, so you can pretend not to flirt with me,” I replied, and pressed my lips to his neck.

I remembered that time when I had found him, sitting alone at night and thinking about me; I had kissed the same patch of skin and realised I had feelings for him aside from desire.

“I don’t think I’d last very long without touching you.”

“What, like when you massaged my shoulder?”

“I couldn’t help it. I had to know how you felt beneath my fingers.”

“And how did I feel?”

“Like something I wanted and that I would never stop wanting,” he replied, and this time I did swoon and mould into his body, which was mine now as much as his.

  

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you have enjoyed the story. If so, leave a comment/kudos. Thanks and much love.


End file.
